Dark Empire
by MasterShaper
Summary: After waking up in a strange place, Roxas remembers little more than who he is. But some things just don't seem right around him... AU. IN PROGRESS.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The historians all say that everything started when His Royal Majesty Ansem the Wise decided to take on six apprentices. To be specific, he had taken on the six boys to aid him in his studies regarding the nature of Hearts with particular emphasis on the effect of Darkness upon the mysterious things. His six apprentices, Xehanort, Dilan, Braig, Even, Aeleus, and Ienzo, did not disappoint. King Ansem had held a nation-wide examination to pick out the six brightest minds among the thousands of youngsters who lived in his kingdom, and those six teenage prodigies had bested the rest. They proved to be worthy of the King's respect, being proficient in the sciences, and also possessed curious minds that served them well in their relentless pursuit of knowledge.

And who could forget? All six didn't easily form emotional attachments to others, and were perfectly willing to leave the comforts provided to them by their homes and families immediately upon receiving notice of their success in the examinations. Basically, they had the makings of great men of science - a lack of feelings, and minds that were close to overflowing with a curiosity that could only be described as dangerous.

Xehanort, the pastor's son, was the group of apprentices' _de facto _leader, having taken charge of the other five whenever they had work to do. The others respected him, and of the six, he was Ansem's favorite.

Dilan, the drunkard's son, was the apprentice with the strangest ideas, which often turned out to be just that little bit better for their research's progress. Many times, dead ends in their experiments had been demolished by his simple ideas, often born out of a moment's creativity.

Braig, the soldier's son, was an easy-going person who excelled at... obtaining subjects for their experimentation. The others never bothered asking just how he had managed to get a hold of so many 'willing' people for their research, and of course, they couldn't be bothered to ask.

Even, the studious son of a teacher, was book-smart and rather ingenious. Sometimes, it seemed that King Ansem was the one struggling to keep up with his razor-edged intelligence, rather than the other way around.

Aeleus, the farmer's son, was a natural at the agricultural sciences. His muscled bulk also served the others' purposes well when it came to dealing with difficult subjects.

Ienzo, the quiet son of a tailor, never really spoke much, but made up for it by producing respectable results from his tasks. Rarely did he fail in any tasks that he was given, and he was particularly good at mentally-breaking their subjects if necessary.

Obviously, all of the above facts should be regarded with a weary mind, and could possibly be entirely false. The historians have minds which serve their master's wishes best, and it wasn't long after he started his research that King Ansem's historians found themselves serving an entirely new master.

Or maybe, _masters_ would be a more appropriate word.

After all, shortly after the mysterious disappearance of King Ansem, his six apprentices assumed power over his kingdom, casting out his wife who was with child at that time. Only later did the six of them realize their error, and despite their frantic efforts, the knight who had been tasked with taking the dethroned queen away to be discretely killed had eloped with her, and her child.

The six usurpers eventually forgot about their little problem, and within months, they had transformed the kingdom of Radiant Garden into a soulless empire, which they all held in their collective grip. Their research into the nature of Darkness and Hearts had allowed them to gain some deadly knowledge, which they used to render themselves, and their closest allies, practically immortal.

They removed their own Hearts, and became into Darkness-filled shells of their former living selves.

They became Nobodies, and so the Dark Empire was formed, governed jointly by the six former apprentices. Historians noted down this series of events under a heading of 'Modern Imperialism', and one-by-one, members of the government who refused to serve the Nobodies' wishes were either killed, or subjected to horrifying tortures and experimentation by the six.

Soon, they took on seven more members, and the Dark Empire renamed its governing body from the 'Council of Six' to 'Organization XIII'. Entire legions of lesser Nobodies were created, as well as swarms of strange creatures called the Heartless, that served to maintain the stability of the Dark Empire. Innumerable citizens were forcibly removed from their homes in the middle of the night, and hauled-off to the castle once known as Hollow Bastion, but which was now named 'Castle Oblivion'.

Within the castle's maze-like interior, the aforementioned people were stripped of their Hearts, and split into their being's two halves - a Nobody and a Heartless. The Organization's scientists, both of them being Nobodies themselves, conducted extensive research into the production of more Nobodies, and the various methodologies of manipulating Darkness to serve their needs. By the time the Organization was done with their sinister agenda, the kingdom once known as Radiant Garden, full of life and happiness, was a kingdom of Darkness, filled with empty homes and patrolled by more Heartless and Nobodies than anyone could have counted by themselves. Even the world of Gaia was re-named as 'The World That Never Was', a symbol of the Nobodies' triumphant rise to power.

Eventually, even the remnants of all Radiant Garden civilization were demolished, as Castle Oblivion expanded its architecture, and soon enough, the enormous castle was surrounded by sprawling complexes and cities. But here was the catch - all those cities and complexes were all empty, and were only inhabited by Nobodies and Heartless.

Within months of their initial moves, neighboring worlds were attacked by swarms of Heartless and Nobodies, and the worlds' Hearts consumed by Darkness. One-by-one, worlds like Olympus Coliseum, Halloween Town, Agrabah, Atlantica, Neverland, Pride Lands, Land of Dragons, and Deep Jungle were destroyed, a token amount of their inhabitants imported to Castle Oblivion for further experimentation.

However, problems soon arose when their thirteenth member, a boy who was in his teens, and who was being groomed for a future role as a full-fledged Nobody, vanished.

This caused some unrest among the Organization, as they realized that the boy's transformation into a Nobody hadn't yet finished. It was extra as disturbing when the Organization's twelve remaining members realized that the boy had been stolen out of Castle Oblivion itself, despite the castle's formidable internal defenses. They had counted fifty-eight corpses of various species forming a trail to the Castle's main doors, and from there, it became clear that the abductors had escaped via a portal or Gummi Ship of some sort. The most suspicious of all was that none of their lesser Nobodies nor Heartless had reported any intruders in the castle, until _after_ the alarms rigged _inside_ the boy's room had been tripped. This implied an inside job, and the Organization realized, at that point of time, that maybe, just maybe, their empire wasn't all that invincible.

Very obviously, this meant that someone from the outside of their kingdom would be able to use him and unlock his memories, therefore possibly exposing their kingdom's weaknesses to any of the rebellious factions that existed off-world. Hundreds of people who had escaped from the Organization's take-over of Radiant Garden had settled on other worlds, and the Organization hadn't yet managed to catch any of them.

But with the boy gone, things were a whole new ball game, altogether.

xxx

Stars glinted in a cloudless night sky, as black as death and as silent as a tomb save for the sounds created by Mother Nature. Insects played their roles in a forest's nocturnal orchestra, while at a beach close to the forest's edge, waves lapped gently at the seashore, their rhythmic motion creating a soothing series of soft rushing noises, that merely served to further enhance the tranquility of the night.

On the beach, light years away from The World That Never Was, two people sat watching the stars, not saying anything to each other. Their expressions were anything but tranquil, and their Hearts were aching with sadness.

In front of their eyes, a star blinked out, its light disappearing like a light bulb that had been blown. The space it had once occupied momentarily seemed to be even darker than the obsidian sky surrounding it, but within seconds, all had returned to normal, as though nothing had happened at all.

"A star's gone out," said the male of the two, in a quiet voice.

"The Organization is relentless," noted his female companion, in a sad tone of voice, "And there's nothing we can do to stop them..."

"Don't worry, we've still got our last hand to play in this game. All isn't lost yet..."

The woman, dressed in a flowing pink dress, turned to look at her companion, decked-out all in black leather clothes and belts, "Do you think they succeeded? Castle Oblivion is extremely well-secured."

"The castle's defenses are all made to protect it from external assaults. An attacking force appearing right inside its rooms? They shouldn't be expecting that."

"But what about the scouting missions? You know what the scouts reported!"

"I know, I know," said the man wearily, "The Organization's Labyrinth, the traps, the Nobodies and Heartless guarding the place... But the people we sent there were the best, and they wont let us down!"

The woman sighed, "As it is, they're already an hour late. For all we know, the Organization could be tracing how we opened those two portals to their world right now..."

"Those captive Nobodies were useful only for one use, Aerith. They allowed us to force open two portals for brief periods of time, and nothing more than that."

They both fell silent, laying back on the cool sand and watching the night sky, wondering if the Organization would be destroying any more worlds that night. So many had already perished, so many worlds devastated by the Darkness...

Suddenly, out of the blue, a portal of Darkness materialized at the pier, three people lurching out of the dark corridor that had linked two worlds for some time. Two of the people seemed to be conscious, and were carrying a third between them. The portal sparkled with electricity and pulsed with energy for a moment, before collapsing in on itself, and erasing all traces of its existence.

"Cloud!" cried Aerith, jumping up and running towards the three newcomers, "Sephiroth!"

"It's alright!" called back one of the two conscious figures, "Get Merlin and DiZ over here! He's out, but he'll be back to consciousness soon!"

Aerith ran off towards a hut on the beach, as the three new arrivals walked off the pier, heading towards the hut themselves.

"You actually managed to get him!" exclaimed the man who had been sitting with Aerith, "The others didn't make it?"

"No, Leon," replied the other newly-arrived man flatly, "Our target here took out six of them before we knocked him out, and the rest were taken out by the Nobodies and Heartless in the Labyrinth. We left just in time to avoid being confronted by Xemnas and the other Organization members themselves."

"That close, huh?" asked Leon, as he saw the motionless teenage boy they were holding, "He's the one?"

"That's him," affirmed Cloud, nodding his head, "Number XIII, Roxas."

Any further conversation was prevented by Aerith's return, and the joining of their company by a man dressed in the blue robes of a master mage, as well as a man swathed in bandages and wearing red robes, who surveyed the situation with a jaundiced yellow eye.


	2. My Name Is Roxas

**My Name Is Roxas**

_"And now, I name you Roxas!" said a man with long silver hair and eyes which were almost like black holes, "Welcome to our Organization!"  
_

_"Roxas, come on now!" this time the speaker was a pale woman with her hair done up in two horn-like spikes, and who was wearing a bright white laboratory coat, "Unleash your inner strength! You can do it!"_

_"The name's Axel," purred a lanky, black-robed man with spiky hair the color of tomato soup, and teardrop-shaped tattoos under his eyes, "Got it memorized?"_

Roxas woke up with a start, cold sweat covering his body and causing his clothes to stick to him as though they were made of wet spandex material. He sat bolt upright in his bed, gasping for breath, as he strained to recall what his dreams had been about. He seemed to recall two men and a woman speaking to him, but beyond that, he couldn't remember anything. Heck, he didn't even know whether he had dreamed of three separate conversations with three different people, or if the three people in his dreams had spoke to him all at once.

Only after he had puzzled over all these trivial facts did he notice an even bigger question. The room he was in didn't seem to be his room - it was wallpapered with floral patterns, and had a large desk as well as wardrobe in its shadowy corners. He squinted through the near-darkness at the bed spread and blanket he had been using. Nope, definitely not his. He certainly didn't recall using _pink_ bed covers, nor did he use a bed sheet with the pattern of cheerful teddy bears on it.

But then again, he didn't seem to concretely recall anything else other than his name, either.

He slowly swung his legs off the edge of the bed, feeling the hard wooden floor's rough texture beneath the soles of his feet. Strange... Weren't the floors in the place he called home all made of the same smooth, white-colored, ceramic-like material?

Even more bewildered now, he looked around the room in confusion, thoroughly screwed-over mentally. Where was he? Was this his home? Whose bedroom was this? What was the date?

_'Your name is Roxas,'_ a voice inside him said clearly, just as he debated as to whether or not his _name_ was really his.

Shakily, he tried to stand up at the side of his(?) bed, and promptly fell over onto the solid floor, flat on his face.

THUMP! He groaned as he felt his head impact on the floor's unyielding surface. He placed his arms at his sides, and tried to do an awkward type of push-up to prop himself into an upright position. In his concentration, he failed to notice the muffled footsteps outside the room he was in.

The door slammed open with a WHAM! against the wall behind it, as it was pushed inwards with enough force to topple a horse. Framed in the doorway's illuminated space was the figure of a man with long, shaggy, and brown hair, with what looked like a woman in pink dress behind him.

"Sora's awake," the man announced, stepping back and drawing an item that looked rather much like a large saber from a scabbard behind his back.

"That's good," replied the woman whose long brown hair was bound in tresses behind her back, "We'll see if he's alright after that... ordeal."

"My name," Roxas snarled, as he grabbed one of the bed's legs, still trying to stand up, "Is Roxas!"

"No, it's Sora," corrected the woman in a soothing voice, as she stepped towards him, her bare feet soundlessly padding across the floor, "You had... an accident of sorts. You hit yourself on your head pretty hard."

"What accident?" he demanded, finally succeeding in getting himself into a seated position up against the wall, "Where am I? Who are you?"

"You're on the Destiny Islands, your hometown, in my house," answered the woman smoothly, "My name is Aerith, and the man out there in the doorway is Squall."

"Leon!" growled the saber-wielding man, "My name is Leon, for goodness' sake!"

"Squall Leonhart, who prefers to be called 'Leon'," the woman amended her statement, rolling her eyes, "And you are Sora."

"Bullshit!"

Aerith seemed quite taken aback by Roxas' sudden outburst, as he forced himself into a standing position, leaning against the wall for balance. His legs were shaking rapidly, as he glared at her with eyes that were a startling shade of blue. Leon stepped into the room, his saber poised for a quick slash or stab. Aerith held him back with a dainty hand over his chest, and Roxas took this as his cue for speech.

"I am Roxas, and I don't think I live, or have ever lived in, a place called Destiny Islands," he said, a tone of finality in his voice, "So how about you cut out the crap, and tell me what really happened to me?"

"If you know so much about me, who are my paren-"

"-like she said," Leon stated, his voice emotionless and cold, "You had an accident."

"You were out on the beach there," Aerith said, pointing out the window at the beach, whose sandy expanses were illuminated by the pale moonlight, "When you fell off the paopu tree, and hit your head on the ground. You've been unconscious for hours."

"I don't buy it," Roxas stated flatly, though his voice wavered ever-so slightly, "It doesn't sound right."

"Look, Sora," Leon interjected, his fatigue obvious through his tone, "We've all been worried sick about you, and now you've finally woken up. So relax, will you?"

"Leon's right," nodded Aerith, smiling brightly, "Have some rest - maybe your head will be cleared up by morning. Maybe you just need some good rest."

Roxas stared warily at the two adults, before plopping himself down on the edge of the bed, and lying down on it. He pulled his legs back up onto the bed, and curled up under the blanket. Within minutes, the steady sound of his deep breathing could be heard.

Leon and Aerith retreated out of the room, visibly shaken by their conversation with 'Sora'. Leon stowed his gunblade away in its scabbard, and Aerith pulled out a large ring of keys from the pocket concealed on the left side of her dress. Interestingly enough, the keys never made any noises when she walked, as though they somehow couldn't jangle together in her concealed pocket.

"Why does he have residual memories?" asked Leon, as Aerith shut the door, and locked it with a small, silver key, "I thought that Merlin and DiZ wiped out the memories of his Nobody!"

"They couldn't wipe out those memories that have been woven too tightly with his soul," explained Aerith, as they walked down the narrow corridor outside Roxas' room, "It seems Xemnas and the others were quite thorough with the stages that they had finished."

"So he's irrevocably a partial Nobody?"

"It seems so, yes. But if we are careful, we should be able to restore his true memories."

"I hope to whatever gods are in heaven that you are right, Aerith. Besides a Keyblade Master, there isn't a way for us to beat the Organization."

"Don't forget, we've still got _her_ if he does fail us," Aerith's voice sounded slightly sorrowful, "The poor girl..."

As their voices faded beyond being audible, silence returned to the part of the house where Roxas slept.

xxx

"So what is Sora's status?" asked a man in his deep voice, as he read lines of computer code that were scrolling past him on several monitors in front of the chair he was seated in. He was wrapped up in a set of deep red robes, and had bandages obscuring his face. A single yellow eye scrutinized the electronic symbols flashing before it, the eye's twin covered by a dark piece of gauze.

"He has convincing residual memories," responded Aerith, her voice betraying her weariness, "And I don't think that we've seen the full extent of his recollections yet."

"'Convincing residual memories'?" the man repeated, still staring at the seemingly undecipherable lines of coding symbols before his eyes.

"He knows his true name," said Leon, from where he was leaning against a bank of monitors, their glass screens matte-black and lifeless, "And he suspects that we're holding back the truth about his real self."

"He asked us to tell him who his parents were, to see if we were being honest with him," added Aerith, a trace of worry evident in her usually steady voice, "DiZ, I think you and Merlin might need to go through his memories again."

DiZ turned his chair around, the bolt underneath the cushion giving out a brief, shrill squeak as he did so. Mentally leaving himself a reminder to grease the turning bolt later, he looked up and addressed the man and woman who awaited his reply to their words.

"The two of us," breathed DiZ, "Have done what we could to restore his memories. To try and remove or alter any more of his memories would result in severe mental damage to him."

"Couldn't you run a deep-thought extraction?" pondered Leon, staring at a smashed keyboard lying in the wastepaper basket.

"Too risky. We might risk undoing all the memory modifications we've already put in place," DiZ shook his head, "At this point of time, we can only hope that he will come to trust you, and that your words will be more believable than the fragments of leftover memories that he has now."

"God damn it, DiZ!" snapped Aerith, her voice dangerously hovering on the edge of anger, "You can't just do that! He'll be suspicious after a while, and then what? What if he brings the Keyblade over to the Organization?!"

"We can only hope," Diz said, his voice heavy, "That he will believe us. Or that our little Princess will mature and find her own strength, and get her Keyblade before the Organization finds out where we are."

"She'd only amount to a fraction of the ability and power that he'll have," Leon said, running a hand through his hair, "And besides, didn't you say that his Other was still intact?"

DiZ nodded, as he fixed the stare of his single, hawk-like eye on Squall, "Sora is still alive and intact, but just in stasis. Xemnas and the others will have to keep him around until they can fully integrate all the necessary memories into the mind of this 'Roxas'."

"He's capable of coherent speech and advanced physical motion," Aerith said, her voice carrying a challenging tone, "Just how much more of Sora do they need to get transfered over?"

"His mind still cannot retain memories properly," DiZ answered, "Except for those that were closely-associated with his heart, he shouldn't be able to remember much about people he has socialized with or places he has been to. He'll be retaining core memories, mostly - his name, age, things like that. Nothing more, nothing less."

The one-eyed man turned back to his computer monitors, his actions a silent dismissal to the two people standing behind him.. Aerith and Leon stared at his back for a moment, before they slowly left the computer control room, leaving him alone with his computer programs.

xxx

Back in the locked bedroom, Roxas tossed and turned violently as he dreamnt of things that he didn't understand, and which he also couldn't remember experiencing or knowing of. Images flashed rapidly past in his mind, like screenshots from a broken slide projector placed on a loop recording.

_"Come on, Roxas!" taunted a blond-haired man with an unusual haircut, who was wearing a black robe, "You can do better than that!"_

_"No problem!" he grunted in reply, flinging something blurry at the man._

_"Whoa!" the man cried, evading the projectile, which exploded into a thousand molten droplets as it hit the wall behind him..._

_... and turned into a gigantic monster, all flailing tentacles and antennae. Roxas' grip tightened on the weapon he had been given, and he braced himself for a hit as the creature surged forward, a strange insignia on its face..._

With a cry, Roxas woke up, once again finding himself back in the same room where Aerith and Leon had placed him."

"MY NAME IS ROXAS!" he yelled, his loud voice echoing sonorously off the hard walls and floor of the room.

Seeing that the window was open, letting in a cool night-time sea breeze, he cautiously got off the bed. Testing his weight on his still shaky legs, he tottered towards the window, and fell forward onto the sill. Outside the room, he could hear two familiar-sounding voices, muffled through the thick wooden door.

"That's it! I'm stopping this screwed-up nonsense right now!"

"Leave him be, Leon. It's probably just a bad dream-"

"Give me the keys, Aerith," Leon's voice was dangerously low now.

There came the sound of a defeated sigh, followed by the surprisingly loud sound of jangling keys. Soon came the grating sound of the wrong key being fitted into the door's keyhole, and muttered cursing from Leon. The key was pulled out, and another forced into the keyhole. Nope, still the wrong key.

"Aerith, which is the right key?"

"Figure it out for yourself," came Aerith's miffed reply, "DiZ and Merlin gave us specific orders to let him be."

"Hellfire can _take_ DiZ and Merlin if he gets away from us!" Leon punched the door, and the keys dropped to the floor.

Roxas gritted his teeth, and hauled himself out of the window using his arms alone. Hefting himself over the sill, he pushed his torso forward, further out of the window. For a moment, he felt the sensation of being suspended in mid-air. The next second, he fell out of the window, landing in a dense cluster of bushes that grew beneath said open window.

From his crudely-cushioned landing site, he heard the room's door slam open, as Leon finally got the right key into the lock.

"DAMN IT! He's gotten away!"

"He'll be somewhere nearby, then!" Aerith's panicked voice cried out, "He couldn't have gotten too far!"

Realizing the desperate situation he was in, Roxas forced himself up onto his legs. Amazingly, they held steady.

Even more amazing was that he found the strength to run, barely-making it out of the house's compound before Leon spotted his fleeing form from where he had been squinting into the darkness outside the window.

xxx

Leon narrowed his eyes in anger as he watched Roxas run towards the beach where Cloud and Sephiroth had brought him in. With an agile leap, he landed on the squashed bushes where Roxas had fallen, and took-off at a sprint after the fleeing teen, whose shaky gait seemed to indicate a partial recovery from the temporary physical disability that was a side-effect of forced memory alteration.

He ran up to within a hundred feet of Roxas, who was at the water's edge already.

"Stupid kid," he muttered, "Where do you think you can run to?"

Withdrawing his gunblade from its scabbard, he leveled it at the water in front of the running blond, and adjusted his aim. Roxas had just stepped into the water, when...

BANG!

The water in front of Roxas' feet erupted into a burst of salty foam, as Leon's first shot hit it. He screeched to a halt, nearly tripping over his own legs as he belatedly tried to avoid stepping on the water where the bullet had hit.

"Sora!" called Leon. He sounded furious, "Stop right there!"

"Go to Hell!" Roxas shouted back, running forward unsteadily as he recovered from the shock of having a gun fired at him.

Before he could take another step, he felt a tremor pass through his mind, as though someone was reaching in with a hand that was tangible, yet invisible. With a cry, he fell to his knees in the shallow water, images flashing before his eyes too fast for him to distinguish between them. It was as though a reel of film was being run before his eyes, but at such speed that he didn't see anything more than a mass of mixed-up colors.

_"Now, this one here's my favorite," declared a man with a ponytail and an eyepatch, with some large scars adorning his craggy face, "She'll shoot the top off anything within her sights, and hasn't ever failed me yet."_

Leon caught up with Roxas, just as the boy fainted again, barely-managing to catch hold of Roxas' shoulder before he fell face-first into the receding waves. Hoisting the unconscious teenager onto his shoulders with a mild grunt of exertion, Leon turned and walked back to Aerith's house, his gunblade still unholstered.

xxx

A blond man with a strange haircut sat up in his hard bed, still half-asleep. He had been awoken by a curious dream, but now, he couldn't remember any parts of the damned dream at all! Muttering several choice curses, he lay back down on his bed, relishing the sensation of the hard plank under his back.

He eventually faded back into sleepiness, making a mental note to himself to settle this issue later. After all, it was rare for a dream to wake him up, and as for those that did... Suffice to say, his natural magical abilities often fed him information during his sleeping hours, and more often than not, the information he obtained during those times was usually important enough to merit a detailed investigation.

But then again, so many people stepped into the sea. Maybe it was just a random burst of energy, after all.

Such were the man's thoughts as he finally re-entered the blissful world of sleep.


	3. Questions

**Questions**

All he could around him were faint voices as well as snippets of sentences, as his head spun with periodic aches and sporadic flashes of images that he couldn't comprehend.

"-y the procedure on him. It-"

"-ill has some persis-"

"-onsciousness. Get hi-"

"-isk! If he-"

"-we'll have to take that risk. Otherwise, if he finds ou-"

"-right then. I'll bring hi-"

_"You need to learn to play with people's minds," a short, slate-haired man with his long hair covering one of his eyes said, almost in a lecturer's tone of voice, "Mental manipulation is extremely useful for breaking people down. Half the battle's won already if you can disturb a person's mind adequately."_

_"But how would I be able to do that?"_

Before the slate-haired man in his memories could answer his question, Roxas felt a sudden surge of energy as he returned to consciousness with a jolt. All he could see were blurs of color, as his eyes adjusted to the harsh, glaring lights that shone down on him from somewhere above his face.

He felt as though his body weighed a thousand pounds. Struggling even with the simple task of rotating his head, and hearing several pops from his neck's vertebrae as they shifted, he focused his eyes on a blurry object that stood several feet away from him, on what looked like a surgical gurney. As his eyesight returned to full clarity, he saw that his guess had been correct - the object was indeed a surgical gurney, but with several boxes placed haphazardly on its padded, mattress-like surface. He could barely make out the wordings on some of the boxes, but he did see the words 'Warning - Consume with prescription only' and 'Do not take without physician's consultation' on some of them. The standard symbols for fragility, thermal sensitivity, and 'THIS WAY UP' labels were also visible on some of the boxes.

_"Don't touch those test tubes!" the man with lanky blond hair snapped imperiously, "They contain several important experimental cultures!"_

'Am I in a hospital?' he wondered, as his eyes quickly took in the sights of the sterile, white-colored walls and floor, and also the bank of surgical theater lights that had been suspended over his head. Upon further glancing around, he noticed that there were several computer monitors on a long table not more than ten feet away from where he lay, presumably on a surgical bed. The smell of disinfectant and sterilized instruments was just barely detectable in the air, his nose picking up only the faintest scent traces of the often-detested substances as he breathed.

Only then did he notice that he was garbed in little more than one of those open-backed hospital gowns. Oh, well. Whoever it was who had decided to put him here had evidently liberated him of his clothing as well. Whoop-de-do, what a whole load of fun.

'If this is a hospital, where's the doctor?' he asked himself mentally, as he saw the medium-sized metal clipboard that had been clipped to the railing at the foot of the bed (yes, it turned out to be a bed after all) he was lying in.

'Ah, must be a report sheet or two there...'

Pushing himself up his arms, and feeling several loud pops from his spine as he stretched-out, he tried to reach the foot of his bed, but failed. Pulling his legs towards himself, he awkwardly shuffled forward, and grabbed the large, plastic clip that was fastening the clipboard to the metal bed-rail.

Just as he got a grip on the clipboard, a door slid open behind the head of the bed he was sitting on, startling him. He whirled around in surprise, brandishing the metal clipboard as though he was about to throw it at the intruder, much like a hunter would have thrown a boomerang at a fleeing animal he had set his sights on.

The action of whipping his torso around turned out to be more disorienting than he thought it would be - his eyesight blacked out momentarily, and he felt a slight wave of nausea wash over his entire body. Abruptly, he got the urge to vomit.

xxx

The newcomers to the medical bay entered, and saw their young 'patient' in his current, curiously-contorted position. He was holding a metal clipboard with several reports secured to it, that seemed poised to be flung at them, and his eyes looked unfocused, as though he were daydreaming or was unable to see clearly.

"Who are you?!" he asked, his voice shaky, "Where am I?"

"Relax, Sora," said a man with a flowing white beard, who was dressed in a set of sky-blue robes and a pointy hat, "We aren't here to harm you."

"Don't call me Sora!" snapped Roxas, frustrated, "My _name_, is _Roxas_!"

"Patience, Sora. Indeed, as my friend here said," nodded the other man, whose face was concealed by bandages, and who was wearing a set of red-and-black robes, "We are here to answer your questions."

Roxas sank back onto the mattress, his grip on the clipboard loosening. It fell to the clean, white-tiled floor with a CLANG! that resounded in the considerably small room.

"Really?" he asked, sounded somewhat deflated, almost relieved if his voice was anything to go by, "So, you'll answer my questions?"

"Absolutely," nodded the red-robed man, his voice neutral.

"All of them," chipped in the blue-robed man, his voice noticeably more cheerful than his companion's. The red-robed man looked at him briefly, his one visible eye betraying a hint of annoyance, before he turned around to look at Roxas again, and his eye seemingly cleared itself of any visible signs of emotion.

"Who are you?" asked Roxas, taking in their familiar-looking clothing, "And why do you dress like that?"

"I am Merlin, and he is DiZ," answered the blue-robed old man, with a small smile, "And we dress like this because I am a master mage, and he is badly injured - his robes contain healing magic woven into them."

"Okay," Roxas replied, sounding slightly doubtful. After all, wasn't magic the stuff you saw in comic books and stories only? "Where am I?"

"You are in my house, on the Destiny Islands," Merlin replied, stroking his chin with a finger, "And you live here, on the Islands."

Roxas made a face that suggested that he was irritated, "I don't recall living on these 'Destiny Islands', Mr. Merlin."

"Just Merlin, Sora," Merlin said, noticing the split-second expression of anger on Roxas' face before the teenager's mask of calmness slipped back on smoothly, "And the reason for your memory loss is rather difficult to explain."

"Yes," confirmed DiZ, who had remained silent thus far, "You have no need to believe the story Aerith and Leon told you about falling from a paopu tree or other nonsense like that. We shall tell you the TRUE events that led to your memory loss."

Roxas nodded, looking just the slightest bit relieved, "So, I guess you two have a decent explanation for all this. Could you tell me everything?"

"Just a second, Sora," Merlin said, snapping his fingers. Out of thin air, two overstuffed armchairs appeared, landing gently on the floor behind Merlin and DiZ. The two men seated themselves on the comfortable-looking chairs, and looked directly at Roxas.

"How did you do that?!"

"Magic, Sora," explained DiZ, "You knew a bit of magic, too, before you lost your memory."

"I knew how to cast spells?"

"Not spells," Merlin corrected, "You weren't that skilled yet. But you did show some magical ability, such as being able to unlock doors by just touching their doorknobs. But in due time, we'll try to help you regain your memory, and your abilities should return to you naturally, then."

"Where was I... Ah yes! Several days ago, you went missing from the Islands," said Merlin, as he waved his hand around absent-mindedly, casually grabbing a cup of steaming-hot liquid out of thin air. Offering the cup to DiZ, he conjured another cup which he offered to Roxas, and kept it for himself when the blond teenager declined to take it, and continued speaking, "A large search for you started, and everyone joined in to help. But no one could find you."

"Then, last night, two friends of Aerith and Leon, named Cloud and Sephiroth, found you lying unconscious on the beach outside Aerith's house. they brought you in, and Aerith lied to you out of panic when you suddenly woke up in the middle of the night."

Roxas felt strangely giddy with confusion. Merlin's words made sense, but yet, something inside him was telling him that the old wizard was still hiding something from him, even though he had been supposedly honest with Roxas so far.

"Go on," Roxas prodded.

"We presume you were kidnapped by a strange group of individuals called Organization XIII," said DiZ, leaning forward in his seat.

_"I represent a group called the Council of Six," the black-robed man said from beneath his hood, which concealed his face, "And it might be in our best interests to have a talk."_

_"About what?" Roxas asked, distinctly uneasy around the faceless man._

_"Lets just say that-"  
_

"-apparently, they tried to alter your memories to suit their purposes," nodded Merlin, thereafter sipping from his cup, "They made you think that your name is 'Roxas' instead of Sora, and also made you think that you never lived on the Islands. We tried to restore your memories, but the Organization seems to have been most thorough in their work of re-writing your memories. After all, they _do_ have an underling or several that are capable of checking and fixing up any parts of your memory they might have missed out on altering. I imagine that to them, it's like weaving a rug of sorts - make a fixed pattern, then make sure that there are no holes or breaks in the weave."

Neither DiZ nor Merlin seemed to have noticed Roxas' brief moment of spacing out, and if they had noticed, they didn't say or do anything in response.

"How could they simply tamper with my memories like that?" asked Roxas, bewildered, "And why do I keep remembering strange people saying weird things to me?"

"Organization XIII are a group of powerful creatures, Sora," DiZ answered, a hint of uneasiness in his voice, "They are the highest-ranking of the Nobodies."

"The who?" Roxas asked, getting even more confused as he received more information from the two older men.

"Nobodies, Sora," Merlin said, flicking a finger at his cup, and causing it to vanish into nothingness, "Beings without Hearts."

"How could someone live without a hear-"

DiZ held up a hand, his gesture silencing Roxas could ask any more questions, "Patience, Sora. Merlin shall explain about them to you. Listen carefully."

Merlin cleared his throat, nodding gratefully to DiZ before he spoke up, "Every person consists of two basic parts. That is to say, their physical body, and their soul."

"The 'Heart' I referred to when I talked about the Nobodies was not the organ that pumps blood throughout a person's body, but rather, it was the soul I was talking about."

"You see, it _is _possible to forcefully separate a person's body and Heart. When these two entities are separated, the Heart gets turned into a creature which we have come to know as a Heartless, and the empty shell that once held the Heart - the body - becomes into a creature which we now call a Nobody."

DiZ sipped pensively from his cup, his eye staring away into nothingness, his voice sounding wistful as he spoke absently, practically to no one in particular, "Everything Merlin has said so far is correct. A Heart that was stolen from its owner gets turned into a Heartless, and the remaining body becomes into a Nobody. We named them as such, because Heartless never _had_ hearts to begin with, and can only exist as the Darkness-corrupted remnants of a person's soul. As for Nobodies... Most people whose Hearts aren't strong enough to withstand the shock of having their souls removed prematurely turn into little more than blank husks. If a person is strong of Heart, then he or she shall become into a Nobody that is distinctly similar to their original selves, which they call their 'Others'. the Organization is an alliance between these types of Nobody, and they possess formidable magical powers indeed - more than enough to alter a person's memories!"

_"Entire worlds shall be laid out at your feet, Roxas!" declared the pink-haired man, his aquamarine eyes gleaming with excitement, "We shall show you what power really is meant to be like!"_

Merlin added on where DiZ left off, "Organization XIII was originally six apprentices to a king called Ansem the Wise. But they, under the king's supervision, began experimentation and research into the nature of Hearts and Darkness."

"One day, the king discovered their illicit experiments. It seemed that the six of them had been discretely picking people off the streets and hiding them in the castle's basement laboratories, where the poor souls were subjected to the most horrifying of experiments."

Looking at Roxas' expression of disgust, Merlin continued, "The king ordered the six apprentices to stop their research at once, and to leave the castle that very night itself. He then retired to bed, and wondered how his six bright pupils could have gone so far wrong."

"Fortunately, the king was a person who saw their betrayal coming before they actually struck. At midnight, four of his six apprentices stormed into his chambers, the numerous loyal Heartless and Nobodies they had created during their experiments easily taking-down any of the king's guards and soldiers that stood in their way. The six apprentices themselves were well-versed in combative magic and some of them could use conventional weaponry proficiently."

"The king evaded capture in his chambers, but he tried to take his wife and daughter along with him on his way out of the castle. When he arrived at the queen's chambers, he saw two of his most loyal apprentices already waiting there for him. They were armed, and the younger of the two, who was also his youngest student, was holding the young princess in a hostage grip. The older apprentice there was watching over the queen."

"Only then did the king realize the full extent of his apprentices' treason, and he managed to escape from the queen's chambers just as the two apprentices there summoned several Nobodies and Heartless to their aid. He barely-managed to escape from the castle itself, since the front door was guarded by Heartless, and nothing was left of his guards save for more Heartless and Nobodies."

Roxas made as if he was about to speak, but DiZ silenced him once again with a raised hand. If looks could have killed, then DiZ and Merlin would have been little more than smouldering lumps of ash on the floor, and their comfy overstuffed armchairs with them.

"Since then," DiZ said, "We have learnt of the existence of the Heartless and Nobodies. The six traitorous apprentices recruited seven more high-ranking Nobodies into their alliance, and since then, they have taken over the world once ruled by Ansem the Wise. They named it The World That Never Was, and from then onwards, they have been slowly spreading their evil, world-by-world. They now possess legions of Heartless and Nobody soldiers under their command, and already, several worlds have been consumed by darkness."

Roxas couldn't take it any more. He spoke up, his voice sharp, "Look, I can buy the bit about memory alteration, but not the rest of your fairy tales."

"Fairy tales?!" Merlin gasped, taken aback.

"Nobodies? Heartless? Darkness spreading to consume worlds?" Roxas shook his head, "You two must really think I'm stupid or something, if you think I'll buy a story like that."

"It is true, Sora!" DiZ exclaimed, his voice sounding slightly close to the edge of desperation, "And you were targeted by the Organization, because you will be a person who plays several important roles in the grand scheme of things to come! Remember what I said about your latent magical powers? That you could unlock things? That's wh-"

"What is it that I can do that these bozos value so much? If they want a lock opened, any ordinary locksmith could do the job for them," snorted Roxas, his anger evident through his tone, "And stop calling me 'Sora'. Since you haven't done any explaining to me, but have spent the time trying to tell me a fairy tale, I'll be sticking by my _real_ name, thank you very much!"

"Sora-" Merlin started, but Roxas silenced him with a glare in his direction.

"Look, Merlin," Roxas said impatiently, "You might be right about the magic and some other stuff, but as for the rest of it... Eh, I'm not buying it."

"Then we shall show you that what we say is true," DiZ declared, standing up. His empty cup fell to the floor, but vanished into thin air before it could have shattered on the floor.

"And just _how_ are you planning to do that?" Roxas asked sweetly, his voice positively dripping with sarcasm that he couldn't be bothered to mask.

"We shall take you to another world, of course," DiZ said, though this time, his voice lacked it's usual air of confidence, causing Merlin to look shocked.

"What?!" Roxas sputtered, not believing his ears, "You guys are off your rockers!"

"DiZ! We can't do that!" Merlin shouted, his cool facade shattering into an expression of pure panic, "They-"

"We'll do it if we have to," DiZ rumbled, his displeasure evident, "If it's the only thing that'll make him believe us."

"Oh, Sora. If only you knew what the Organization was trying to unlock..." Merlin glanced sadly at him, before mumbling something incomprehensible, and thereafter disappearing with a neat little POOF! His armchair had vanished with him, and so had DiZ's, though the man with the concealed face jumped up just in time to avoid falling flat on his back. Looking disgruntled, DiZ looked Roxas in the eye, and spoke up.

"I understand that all this may be a little hard to believe, let alone understand. But give us the benefit of the doubt, and you'll see that we are speaking the truth to you."

"'Hard to believe'?" Roxas quoted, his voice hard, "DiZ, Dim, Dick, or whatever you said your name was... It's all a whole load of nonsense."

Shaking his head, DiZ gestured at the door.

"Come with me, Sora, and I shall show you the truth."

"Hell no!" Roxas scoffed, "How do I know that you don't have someone waiting outside to kill me since I didn't believe your little bullshit tale?"

"I have no way of informing my allies of your disbelief," DiZ flatly replied.

"Your friend Merlin left the room already," Roxas pointed out.

DiZ narrowed his eye, "Then you leave me no choice, Sora..."

"It's Roxas!"

That was all Roxas managed to say, before DiZ snapped his fingers, and a spherical machine concealed under the bed he was sitting on revealed itself. Before Roxas could say anything or otherwise react, the machine rushed forward, and stung him in the arm with a needle. It then flew back under the bed, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

"What the Hell?!" he exclaimed, looking at the neat little puncture the machine had made in his skin.

"It's all right, Sora," DiZ's voice said, in progressively louder and slurred tones, "We shall show you _everything_..."

Once again, Roxas fell into unconsciousness, blackness enveloping his world and a thousand blurred pictures flashing rapidly in his mind's eye.


	4. Answers

**Answers**

Roxas sat quietly on a metal seat, trapped between two slender men, one short and one not so, with only several inches separating him from either guy. The shorter of the duo was a spiky-haired blond who carried a huge, ancient-looking sword around on his back, but which he now kept resting against the wall. The taller man was a silver-haired guy, whose sword looked to be about seven feet long, and rather much like a samurai's katana in shape. Both were dressed in black, though the taller one was decked-out in leather, while the shorter one was wearing a strange outfit that was sleeveless on his right side.

Given their choice of outfits, what he assumed to be their favorite weapons, and general effeminate appearances, Roxas guessed that the two of them were little more than two homosexual goths trying to compensate for something by hauling those big-ass swords all over the goddamn place.

After reviewing his decision to brand the two as faggots, pretty boys, and under-endowed in the penis department, Roxas realized that he was bored. And so, he decided to put his mild case of homophobia aside, and strike up a careful bit of conversation with them. He reasoned that as long as he watched what he said, there would be little odds that the two of them would gang up on him and molest him or some unholy crap like that.

Thankfully, someone had taken the liberty of dressing him up in his proper clothes after he had been forcefully knocked out. Obviously, he was infinitely more comfortable being fully-clothed around these strange guys, rather than having nothing more than a open-backed hospital gown to cover him up.

When one is a fourteen-year-old blond guy with rather feminine looks, it does not bode well for said person to talk too freely with two possible gay rapists, especially given that the aforementioned poor, confused minor also didn't have the foggiest idea of where he was, who was piloting the ship, and where he was headed.

Clearing his throat in what he hoped was a manly manner (well, it was at least more masculine than his usual throat-clearing noises), he spoke to neither of them in particular.

"Boring ride, huh?"

For all the silence that followed, Roxas made the general assumption that the two men were possibly deaf or didn't understand English, in addition to all the previous labels he had so ungraciously bestowed upon them. Either that, or he had somehow grievously insulted them, their mothers, or their gods.

The short, blond guy answered briefly, in a soft voice, "Maybe for you it is. For us, it's a whole bundle of nerve-wracking waiting."

"Why? What's so nerve-wracking about traveling in this... ship?" Roxas asked, patting the seating space besides him, "What are we on, anyway?"

"Gummi Ship," replied the man, now absent-mindedly running a hand along the haft of his sword, "It moves through Gummi Space. And before you ask, we're headed out to Disney Castle."

"Disney Castle?!" Roxas couldn't believe his ears, "Isn't that place nothing more than a myth?"

"It's real enough," the blond smirked slightly, "As real as you, me, and Seph, here."

"I'm Roxas, by the way," he said, cautiously deciding that introducing himself wouldn't be construed as an invitation for a gay threesome on the floor or something like that.

"I'm Cloud, he's Sephiroth," the blond nodded, waving a hand to gesture at his silver-haired companion, "Sephiroth here doesn't talk much."

_"-Sephiroth. He was the best, but he defected," said the pony-tailed man with his eyepatch, "Shame. The Organization could have used a General like hi-"_

"-ello? Hello, Roxas?" Roxas blinked in confusion as Cloud waved a gloved hand in front of his face.

"What?" he muttered, "What did you say?"

"I asked you if you know why we're headed to Disney Castle," Cloud answered, looking puzzled, "Dude, you spaced out completely back there..."

"Was Sephiroth ever a General?" Roxas blurted out before he knew it, drawing surprised looks from both of the older men.

"Yes, how did you know?" Sephiroth asked, his voice wary.

"Just remembered it out of somewhere," Roxas mumbled, looking at the far wall.

Cloud looked slightly uneasy, "That was something from a long time ago, Roxas. Almost another lifetime, I'd say."

Sephiroth's mind seemed to be just as far away as he absently added, "Things were different, then."

"You still haven't answered my question," Cloud said, perking up, "Just _why_ are you being headed for Disney Castle? All they told us was to escort you on this Gummi Ship, while they went on ahead."

"I... I don't know," Roxas said, feeling a wave of confusion wash over him, "What's so special about Disney Castle, anyway?"

"King Mickey lives there," Sephiroth replied simply, not saying anything more than those four uninformative words.

"Who's that?"

"King Mickey was a friend of Ansem the Wise," Cloud said, leaning back and stretching his back, "He was the one who gave Ansem the idea of experimenting on and researching the nature of Hearts and Darkness."

"Oh, give me a break!" both Cloud and Sephiroth stared at Roxas in confusion as the blond spat out those words at them, "Those two guys... DiZ and Merlin? Whatever their names are, they tried to feed me a whole lot of crap about the Heart, Darkness, Heartless, and Nobodies. I don't buy that stuff."

"It's true," Cloud protested, shaking his head, "Those things all really DO exist."

"How can it be?" Roxas retorted, "That a person can live without a heart?"

Wordlessly, Cloud rolled up the sleeve on his left arm, showing an ugly-looking patch of blackened skin to Roxas. Roxas was appalled by the skin's appearance - it looked like a animal's claw markings, but which had been left untended. The patch of skin seemed to be literally decaying on Cloud's still (presumably) healthy arm, and emitted a faint smell much like ozone, like the air before a storm.

"A Nobody did this to me," Cloud explained, looking at Roxas, "One of the types developed using Mako as one of its basic physical constituents."

"Mako?" Roxas felt a hint of familiarity at the sound of that word, "Isn't that stuff used as an energy source?"

"It used to be," Sephiroth answered, now inspecting the blade of his long-sword, "But Ansem the Wise outlawed its usage."

"I'm going to ignore any more of this Ansem stuff, but why would an _energy source_ be banned?"

"Well, it causes mutations," Cloud explained, rolling his sleeve back down to cover his infected arm, "And also the creation of monsters."

"Monsters?" the cynicism in Roxas' voice was evident.

"If you got a small dose of Mako radiation, you would probably remain quite normal, but otherwise gain enhanced reflexes, sensory capacity, and strength," Cloud went on, "But in excessive amounts, Mako could turn people into dangerous creatures that no longer knew who they once were."

"Last time, Ansem the Wise started an experiment called the SOLDIER program. He recruited two scientists, Professors Hojo and Maleficent, and worked with them to investigate the viability of creating superhuman soldiers through Mako infusion."

"You mean human experimentation?" since his two traveling companions seemed to be so fixed in talking about this 'Ansem', Roxas decided to just let them talk, even if was just to while away the time.

"Well, yes," Cloud shrugged, "But the whole thing was mostly a failure. Out of the ten subjects, only three of them survived being pumped with doses of Mako that would have killed most other organisms."

Sephiroth looked at Roxas levelly, "Cloud, I, and a man named Zack were the three survivors."

Roxas looked at them in disbelief. First they tried to tell him that a person could actually live without a heart, and now this nonsense! He was about to voice his thoughts, when Cloud cut him off.

"It might sound hard to believe, but..."

With a graceful flick of his wrist, the blade of his huge sword was a mere half-inch away from Roxas' throat.

"We do have proof of our claims," the blond man finished, with a smirk.

Just then, a voice was heard from somewhere in the room they were in.

"We have arrived at Disney Castle," the static-distorted voice said, still pretty recognizable as being DiZ's, "Prepare for landing in five."

"Prepare?" Roxas asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Strap yourself down," Cloud advised, as he secured a seat-belt around his waist. His sword, Roxas noticed, had been pulled away from his throat as fast as it had arrived there.

_'SOLDIER my ass. That damn sword's probably made of plastic or something...'_

"Three."

Roxas frantically pulled on the seat-belts next to him, which he hadn't noticed before the landing announcement.

"One. Mark."

The little Gummi Ship descended into the atmosphere of Disney Castle, accelerating wildly as it rocketed towards the world's surface.

_Somewhere else, much further away..._

Nineteen shadowy figures sat around a long table, in a large room that seemed to be devoid of most light. The only illumination in the room was from a spherical object hovering over the center of the table, which showed a considerably-accurate holographic representation of a world. Right now, a small object was trying to land on the world, and had just entered the world's atmosphere out of Gummi space.

"So it _is_ that damn mouse who's behind the kidnapping," said a man in a gruff voice, as he viewed the display with his one viable eye.

"We can't be sure yet," objected a man with long, blond hair, "They might be trying to hide him in the castle, but for all we know, the mouse is not involved."

"He IS involved!" growled a blue-haired man with elf-like ears, "If he wasn't, he damn well is now!"

"Number Nine!" boomed an authoritative-sounding man's voice from the head of the table, just as several more arguing voices started to be heard, "Didn't you report a powerful presence at sea the other day?"

The person he had spoken to, a mullet-headed blond nodded, the gesture barely-visible in the near-darkness of the room, "I did, but it was... faint."

"Faint or not, which world was it from?"

The mullet-headed man sputtered, "But it is nearly impossible to pin-point a single _world_ for that! We _do _have Nobodies wandering all about the known, galaxy, don't we?"

"But none of our minion Nobodies could have triggered such a powerful vision," reasoned a man who sat next to him, who was shuffling a deck of cards, "And you _know_ which Nobody we are looking for."

"So which world was it already?!" spat a feminine voice, "It should have been pretty near, for you to have been able to pick up the energy signature!"

"Well, I'd guess that it's within range of our portals," the man sighed, running a hand through his hair, "Otherwise I wouldn't have picked it up."

"So that settles it, then," said the man seated at the head of the table, "Number Six, you shall dispatch a group of your Shadow Sneaks to Disney Castle, and they shall bring all relevant information to us."

"But surely they aren't the most suited for the task?" the slated-haired man he had spoken to replied, "Given that from what we know, Disney Castle has little to no shadows in its most secure locations?"

"I'll volunteer some of my Assassins for the job," said a man with flaming red hair, and who had teardrop-shaped markings beneath his eyes, "They'll be able to go where the Shadow Sneaks can't reach."

The slate-haired man paused for a moment, thinking the offer over, before nodding in approval, "All right, then."

As he finished his sentence, six wraith-like creatures materialized in the darkness behind his seat. They resembled shapeless things that had their forms concealed beneath a smoke-colored robe, and which had a spiky-looking emblem on their backs. Behind the red-headed man appeared four slender creatures with spiny tentacles, all four of the strange creatures diving into, and disappearing into the floor. Their waving tentacles showed where they were, as they stayed inside the ground.

"Go to Disney Castle," ordered the slate-haired man, addressing the ten creatures, "And gather as much information as you can about the Gummi Ship that just arrived, and ALL of it's passengers."

The wraith-liked creatures nodded, than vanished as they opened up portals of Darkness, and stepped into another world. The tentacled creatures soon followed suit, and within seconds, the room was back to having nineteen occupants again.

"We shall adjourn our meeting for now," announced the man who sat at the head of the table, "And when our spies return, we shall decide on what we shall do."

Nodding their assent, all eighteen of the room's occupants got up from their seats, and walked out of the room, whispering discretely among themselves.

The man was left alone in the room, and soon enough, he portalled out of the room, leaving it empty.

xxx

Roxas goggled at the large castle which DiZ had landed the ship in front of. It had countless minnarets, towers, and windows, as well as hundreds of little flags flapping in the wind. The castle's roof was colored blue in its entirety, and everything had little markings on them, much like three circles joined together to form a roughly V-shaped logo.

As he, DiZ, Cloud, and Sephiroth walked towards the castle's ridiculously large front doors, Roxas noticed a row of what looked like brooms and mops walking along leisurely in the castle's gardens, each carrying two buckets of water.

"Are those brooms?" he asked, not believing his eyes, "And mops?"

DiZ turned to look, and nodded, a small smile on his face, "King Mickey enchanted them to work by themselves. Most interesting and convenient, if you ask me."

Reluctantly looking back at the front, and away from the animated brooms and mops (which were now watering the hedges), Roxas walked on, and nearly bumped right into DiZ when the robed man stopped in his tracks.

"Now, Sora," DiZ said, turning around to face him, "I will have you know that you are to treat King Mickey with the utmost respect. He is a great as well as learned ruler, and will answer all of your questions if you behave yourself."

Without even waiting for any replies Roxas could have made, DiZ whipped around, and stepped up briskly towards the front doors of the towering castle. Holding up a hand, DiZ rapped neatly on the door, the miniscule action somehow generating a series of echoing knocks in both of the fifty-foot tall doors.

Roxas was just wondering how the doors were going to be opened, when a small, regular-sized door popped open right in front of Diz, allowing the man to step inside the castle.

As the group of them walked into the castle's cavernous, cathedral-sized grand entrance hall, none of them nocticed that Cloud's shadow lingered on the ground behind him for a moment, and that for just that brief several seconds, Cloud had had _two_ shadows. The extra shadow soon disappeared, and in the castle, a clueless broom that was sweeping the entrance hall's floor didn't realize that its shadow was darker than usual.

xxx

"It is confirmed, Superior," the slate-haired man reported, as he stood before a silver-haired, dark-skinned man, "Our lost member is in Disney Castle."

"So are they planning on hiding him there?" asked the silver-haired man, looking as though he was lost in his thoughts.

"For now, they are keeping quiet," answered the slate-haired man, "But my Shadow Sneaks did pick up snatches of conversation saying that they were going to ask King Mickey some questions."

"They must have tried to tamper with Roxas' memories," huffed the man who was called the Superior, "Luckily for us, Namine's skills at memory manipulation are better than theirs will ever be!"

His subordinate stood there in silence, not making any comments on his statement.

"Wait till we know _exactly_ what they are planning to do, then report back to me," ordered the Superior, in a brusque voice, "And in the meantime, get Rufus and the Turks on standby."

Nodding, the slate-haired man summoned a portal of darkness, and vanished into its swirling black mass.

xxx

"Hello, there DiZ! Cloud and Sephiroth, it's been ages! Oh my goodness, is that Sora?" King Mickey gushed in his high-pitched voice, as he excitedly greeted the four visitors to his world.

Roxas stared in disbelief at the three-foot tall bipedal mouse that stood before them, wearing a set of tastefully-made red robes. A small crown sat perched daintily between the talking rodent's two large ears, and a strange-looking charm, much like a small, two-dimensional representation of a crown, was hung around King Mickey's neck on a fine chain.

"You... _You're_ King Mickey?!" he blurted out before he could stop himself from doing so.

"Sora!" DiZ chided, annoyance clear in his tone, "Wha-"

"Relax, DiZ," King Mickey interrupted, as he hopped-off his small-sized throne, "It's only natural that he'll be curious."

Mickey turned to face Roxas, and Roxas could see the sadness reflected in his large, bright eyes, "But I _am_ rather saddened that he's forgotten me already..."

"I knew you?" Roxas asked, feeling even more confused than ever.

"Of course! You were from Destiny Islands, and came over to this world several times to visit," Mickey nodded, "But a year back, you disappeared."

"I know that bit about me disappearing, but why can't I remember anything?" Roxas asked, wanting to pull his hair out. It was the same words, over-and-over again!

"Take a seat, and we'll talk," Mickey said, waving his hands. Four armchairs appeared behind his four guests, and they seated themselves in the comfortable seats.

"Now, DiZ here tells me that you don't believe in the stuff about the Heartless and Nobodies," Mickey said, jumping back onto his throne, "But that's perfectly understandable, given your situation."

Roxas nodded, grateful for the bit of understanding on Mickey's behalf.

"Well, I believe in _showing_ you what things are about," Mickey said, snapping his fingers. At the gesture, a small but gilded cage materialized in the middle of the room, containing a black creature with two glowing, yellow eyes. The thing was about the size of a large dog, with two antennae, and lanky limbs that terminated in withered points, not actual hands or feet.

_"The power to command the Heartless is indeed something, but to command Nobodies is significantly tougher," said a man in a laboratory coat, as he wiped the lenses of his spectacles, "You-"_

"Heartless!" cried Cloud, jumping to his feet and startling Roxas out of his spaced-out state, "Your Majesty, how-"

"No worries, Cloud!" Mickey chirped, "Master Yen Sid himself enchanted this cage. No Darkness can pass out of it, but it can be forced in."

"A one-way Heartless trap," Sephiroth noted, some admiration in his voice, "Smart."

"It's only big enough for one specimen," Mickey added, "But it will have to do."

"THAT'S a Heartless?" Roxas asked, not believing his eyes.

"A Neoshadow, to be exact," DiZ informed him, "One of the newer breeds of Heartless that the Organization has come up with."

"Okay..."

"We do have pictures of the others," Mickey said, before snapping his fingers once again. The caged Neoshadow vanished, and a large book appeared in his hands.

"Come over, Sora, and I'll show you what some of the other Heartless look like."

Roxas got up from his seat, and walked over to the king's throne. His shadow seemed to stick to his chair for a moment, before resuming a shadow's normal behavior of following his movements. Sephiroth squinted at the strange phenomena for a moment, before dismissing it as a trick of the light on his eyes.

King Mickey had opened the thick, leather-bound tome, and showed Roxas a page with the drawing of a Neoshadow on it.

"The Neoshadow, as you saw earlier."

He flipped several pages, and came to the drawing of a smaller version of the Neoshadow, which also lacked the large-sized antennae, "The Shadow Heartless."

"Guard Armor," a huge set of floating armor, gauntlets, and boots.

"Storm Rider," a large, serpent-like creature with webbed, fan-like wings.

Just as King Mickey flipped to the next page, Roxas paled, as he realized what the creature drawn there was.

"That's a Soldier, isn't it?" he asked, his voice trembling. the drawing showed a Heartless that wore a tin funnel as a helmet of sorts, and which had a blue outfit on.

"So you _do_ remember the Soldiers!" exclaimed DiZ, sitting up straighter in his chair.

_'Send the Soldiers after the others!' shouted the black-robed figure, its face obscured beneath a hood, 'I'll go after him with some Dusks...'_

"They... They came," Roxas stuttered, "And... I can't remember... Flashes of white and gray..."

Mickey nodded, closing the thick book with a muffled THUMP! The book disappeared, and the mousy king spoke to Roxas.

"Do you believe us now?"

Roxas walked back to his vacated armchair, and sat down heavily in it, his legs feeling like rubber. His mind was dizzy, not knowing just how much of the image flashes he had were real, and which had been fabricated. He held his head in his hands, and squeezed his eyes shut tight.

xxx

In the garden, King Mickey's enchanted brooms and mops lay in a pile of splintered wood that would have made for some decent kindling. The castle's front doors were wide-open, the blood of one of King Mickey's guards splattered over the large doors like a grotesque floral paint-job.

In the castle's corridors, the shadows cast by several decorative flowerpots elongated, then materialized as six Shadow Sneak Nobodies, in front of a short figure wearing the standard-issue black robe worn by members of Organization XIII when they were off-world. Behind the short Nobody were five other lower-ranking Nobodies, which were still pretty powerful, given that their human forms were still distinct. One was dressed all in white, and the last four were all dressed in neat blue suits (well, one of them had his suit in a very disheveled state, but details are insignificant here).

"So they are in the king's audience chamber?" the hooded Nobody asked, to which his Shadow Sneaks nodded. He nodded in return, "Good. You six and the Assassins will go in first to distract the others, while the six of us retrieve the boy."

xxx

"It's alright, Sora," Mickey said, gently patting a distraught Roxas on the back, "It's hard, I know..."

Just then, the door to the audience chamber blew open with a muffled BOOM! as four gray-colored flying creatures slammed through it. Before anyone in the room could do anything, they had vanished into the ground, as though they could swim in the solid granite floor. Several spiny tentacles appeared now and then, as the creatures moved towards the throne.

"Nobodies!" spat DiZ, jumping up from his chair and moving to stand in front of King Mickey, "Cloud, Sephiroth! You know what to do!"

Even before he had finished speaking, the two former-SOLDIER's had leaped out of their seats, and were bearing down on the approaching subterranean Nobodies with their swords drawn.

"What's going on?!" Roxas cried, as he dashed next to King Mickey, who was standing on his throne.

"The Organization knows you're here now!" the mouse replied, gritting his teeth, "So we'll have to put up a fight!"

Roxas could only watch as the tentacled Nobodies flew out of the ground, their wildly-flailing arms missing Cloud and Sephiroth by mere inches. Light glinted-off the spiny growths on their arms, as though the spines were made of metal. Roxas' assumption was proved somewhat correct when a stray tentacle shredded the red carpet on the floor into strips of frayed ribbons.

Only then did he notice that out of the four Nobodies which had barged into the room, only _three_ were locked in combat with the two swordsmen.

"King Mickey, look out!" he shouted, just as the fourth Nobody materialized out of the ground behind the throne. It swung a razor-studded arm at the king, and Roxas reflexively drew back, closing his eyes as he did so.

CHING!

There was a chiming sound of blades slipping on metal, and Roxas saw that the king had parried the Nobody's blow with what looked like a giant key.

"Roxas, stay with me!" Mickey said, as he swung his weapon at the agitated Nobody, "DiZ, help out, will you!"

DiZ stepped forward, and analyzed the situation. Seeing that the four Nobodies were retreating into the ground to retreat from the blows which might have killed them, he murmured some words in a strange tongue, and stamped his right foot hard on the ground.

Everyone else in the room nearly fell over, as the ground quaked violently, the four Nobodies immediately leaving their underground positions. With several quick swipes, the four Nobodies were cleaved into pieces by Cloud, Sephiroth, and Mickey, their gray bodies being engulfed in black smoke reeking of ozone before they disintegrated into balls of darkness.

As the air cleared of the pungent odor of ozone, two creatures ran into the audience chamber, looking quite the worse for wear. One was a lanky, bipedal dog in a knight's armor, and the other, a squat duck in what looked like half of a mage's outfit.

"Your Majesty!" quacked the duck, "Are you alright?!"

"What kept you two?" asked Mickey, his oversized key-weapon disappearing as he turned to face the two newcomers.

"Ah-yuk! Six Nobodies were waitin' outside the audience chambers!" replied the dog, sniffing loudly, "We was lucky they weren't no more than Shadow Sneaks."

"Shadow Sneaks?!" DiZ exclaimed, his one eye widening, "Your Majesty, I'm sure you know what this means..."

Mickey's expression darkened, as he once again summoned his weapon, and cast his robe aside, revealing a black robe underneath.

"They'll be after the Cornerstone, since they sent their Nobodies to retrieve Sora. Cloud, Sephiroth, will you help me to protect the Cornerstone?"

The two men nodded, and with that exchange, the three of them ran out of the audience chamber, and headed down a set of stairs outside the room.

"Well, well, well," a voice said, from behind the four people remaining in the room, "Looks like our king here thinks you'll be safe here, Roxas..."

Everyone whipped around, seeing a black-robed figure standing there.

"You Organization scum!" boomed DiZ, stepping in front of Roxas, "Leave this place, and never again lay your hands on Sora!"

"His name is Roxas now," said the hooded figure, as four more Nobodies materialized around it. This time, the hunched-over Nobodies were garbed in heavy-looking sets or armor, and were carrying large, deadly-looking hammers, "And I'll not be leaving unless he's in my possession."

"Not a chance, Nobody!" the duck quacked, a mage's staff appearing in its right hand.

"Ah-yuk!" nodded the dog, pulling a shield out from behind its back.

The hodded Nobody sighed, "A pity. Berserkers, attack!"

The four minion Nobodies jumped forward, swinging their large stone hammers like four deadly pendulums. The duck sent several fireballs flying at the Nobodies, while the dog rushed forward and started furiously bashing at one of them using its shield.

DiZ stepped protectively in front of Roxas, "Stay with me, Roxas. I'm not a good fighter, but I'll protect you!"

"From this?" a dark portal opened up behind DiZ, and a Nobody in what looked like a neat, blue business suit stepped out, beating DiZ across the back of his head using a brass-knuckled fists.

The red-robed man swayed on the spot for a moment, before falling to the ground, unconscious, the bandages wrapped around his head darkening with a spreading liquid stain. Before Roxas could even try to do anything, the blue-suited Nobody with the long, black hair had grabbed him by the shoulder in a crushing grip.

"Zexion, I've got him!" called the Nobody, his other hand securing both of Roxas' wrists behind his back within the fraction of a second since he'd knocked-out DiZ.

Roxas felt a wave of rage surge through him at... everything. Being lied to, being treated like someone else, being kept in the dark... All the anger he'd bottled up since he'd woken up in Aerith's house exploded out of him in an instant, right after the blue-suited Nobody had caught hold of him.

A dazzling flash of white light erupted in the room, momentarily blinding all of its living occupants. When the glare had died-out, the blue-suited Nobody was lying in a heap on the floor beneath the far wall, several large cracks forming a cobweb on the wall where he had been slammed into the wall. The duck and dog were also unconscious in a small heap, their four Nobody opponents nowhere in sight, presumably gone.

The hooded Nobody took a rapid step back, and it was then that Roxas realized that he was armed.

To be specific, he was armed with two large keys, much like the one which King Mickey had earlier wielded against the first Nobodies that attacked. One of his two keys was a white, feminine-looking object with a seashell charm attached to its handle, while the other was a black thing that seemed all sharp edges and sleek curves, built to kill.

"Roxas, come with me," said the hooded Nobody, apparently named Zexion, "I'll show you the truth that these idiots were hiding from you."

"I DON'T CARE ANYMORE!" Roxas bellowed, fed-up with hearing the same empty promise repeated over-and-over again, "JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"

He leaped at Zexion, brandishing his two weapon-keys. The Nobody conjured a large book out of thin air, and within a split-second, he too was armed with two similar weapons, his book having morphed into them somehow.

Their giant keys clashed in mid-air, as the two of them fought.

"Roxas, stop this!"

"Then just go away!"


	5. Answers 2

**Answers 2**

A group of four individuals dressed in suits stood before two large, thoroughly-secured doors. At least four keyholes were visible on the locks, and from the echoes that were audible when the door was rapped-on, several crossbeams and latches were fastened on the doors' other side.

One of the four, a red-headed, pony-tailed man in a messy blue suit, stepped forward and kicked the door, "Stupid freakin' locks. How the Hell are we gonna get past 'em?"

"Blow them up?" suggested one of his companions, a short, blond woman with a messy mop of hair, "We _can_ call in some Minute Bombs if we wanted to.

"The Cornerstone will prevent those low-level Heartless from getting in here, and there's no need for all that noisy ordinance," interrupted one of the four figures, a tall blond man dressed entirely in white, "Professors Maleficent and Hojo recently discovered a new breed of high-level Heartless that are quite hard to synthesize. They graciously gave me one for the purpose of this mission."

"Heartless?" the the red-headed man made a face, "Are you sure that this one could get past the wards on the castle?"

"This one is called the Possessor," the man nodded, snapping his fingers. Out of nowhere, a gaseous mass materialized, eventually taking on a spiky, spherical shape with two prominent yellow eyes which glowed sinisterly from within themselves, and a crooked maw lined with rows of corroded and deformed fangs that would have given any sane dentist either a heart attack or a massive stroke. A stylized heart-shaped emblem was emblazoned on the creature's body, right below its gaping chasm of a mouth. The heart in the emblem was black, with two crisscrossing thorny lines on its main section, and three little barbs sticking out of its point.

"It isn't too formidable in a fight," the man went on, as he took out a shiny, sawed-off shotgun from somewhere inside the folds of his white suit-and-coat outfit, "But it does have the ability to possess and manipulate all manner of inanimate objects. Take doors and locks, for example."

"This entrance is magically sealed," grunted the last of the four, a massive, bald-headed man wearing a sleek pair of mirrored sunglasses, who had remained silent thus far, "Can't you feel the aura of the seals?"

"Well, then we'll just have to see how well this 'Possessor' can do it's work, yeah?" said the red-headed man lazily, waving a long, metal-made baton around casually, "Why don't ya set it to work, eh Boss?"

"Possessor, _unlock the door_," ordered the man in white, stepping aside and gesturing towards the locks on the door.

The Heartless flew slowly forward, and diffused into one of the door's many keyholes, its gaseous body easily conforming to the shape of the small entrances that led to the inner parts of the doors' various locking mechanisms. For a moment, everything was silent. Then, with a deep, groaning sound, the two huge doors started to vibrate strongly, light being emitted from their keyholes.

Suddenly, the entire _chamber_ itself started to quake with energy from the Possessor's assault on the doors' magical seals. Cracks spider-webbed their way all-over the chamber's flat surfaces, causing the four figures to step back gingerly. Great tendrils of darkness exploded out of the breaks in the walls, ceiling, and floor, their roving masses pulsing with latent energy. For a second or three, the innumerable tendrils flailed around wildly in the air, before converging with trembendous force upon a single target; the doors.

With a deafening BOOM! the tendrils impacted upon the doors' solid forms. The doors glowed with a bright white light, as the magic woven into their very materials arose to counteract the dark energy that was trying to force them open.

It all ended as soon as it started; the doors' glow vanished after a final, brilliant flash, and the doors slammed open with surprising force, their locks and seals shattering into smithereens. Motile tendrils conjured of dark magic surged forward through the open doorway, knocking down guards that had been waiting on the other side of the doors, and sending the men flying as their evil pulses shot forward. As they traveled onward, their standing ends solidified into thick, spine-studded vines the color of a moonless night.

The man in white smiled sadistically as the Possessor Heartless slowly exited the doors' ruined masses, and floated up to him.

"Very good! Now, on to the Hall of the Cornerstone!"

xxx

Roxas swung one of his two weapon-keys at the black-robed Nobody apparently named 'Zexion'. The Nobody parried the strike using one of his own two weapon-keys, and struck back at Roxas using that same key, the riposte missing its intended target by a mere hair. Seeing his opportunity to get in a blow, Roxas _threw_ his other key at the Nobody's head, the weapon hitting home with a resounding CRACK!

Zexion staggered back with a grunt, his two keys disintegrating as he raised one hand to clutch at his wounded head, the hood that obscured his face torn where the key had hit him. As the Nobody disappeared into a portal of darkness, Roxas saw that the key Zexion had used to fight him was actually his morphed book, the other key seemingly having been conjured out of thin air or nothing more than a very convincing illusion. Before a minute had elapsed, a powerful blow was dealt out to the back of his head, sending him to his knees on the shredded red carpet. His two weapon-keys flew out of his hands, landing with several loud clanking noises on the parts of the floor that weren't carpeted.

The wounded Nobody had materialized behind him, and now had his hood down, revealing a shaggy mess of slate-colored hair that fell down in front of his face, exposing only the left side of his facial features. A nasty-looking gash was on the visible side of his face, but no blood was seeping out of the wound - only a smoky gray substance was just barely-visible swirling around within the proximity of the gash. Roxas looked up with bleary eyes, and saw that Zexion had slammed the large book he was seemingly armed with across his head. The book, upon closer inspection, was revealed to have a spine and covers that had been reinforced with metal, hence explaining its hard-hitting nature.

"Impressive, Roxas," if Zexion was in any pain, he didn't show it through his voice, "Your skills are still up to mark, I see."

"To Hell with you!" Roxas snarled, trying to leap to his feet, only to be roughly-grabbed by the blue-suited Nobody he had blown-back into the wall earlier, who had apparently regained his consciousness, "Let me go!"

"Keep a good grip on him, Tseng," Zexion ordered, ignoring Roxas' struggles as he pulled-up his torn hood to once again hide his face, the hood's fabric magically mending itself, "We shall re-group with Rufus and your other Turks now."

"Got it," Tseng nodded, his vice-like grip on Roxas' arm feeling as though it could cut-off the circulation to the aforementioned limb any second now, "And what about the Keyblades?"

Zexion waved his free hand casually, "Leave them be. They'll find him again when the time is right."

The male Nobody apparently Tseng nodded, and Roxas was forcefully-pushed forward into the portal of darkness that Zexion opened right in front of them. The blond Keyblade-wielder struggled briefly, but a clout across his head by Tseng subdued him quickly.

The portal of darkness flared-up with energy as the three figures stepped through it, and collapsed into nothing as Zexion closed it, leaving behind nothing but several cracks on the floor and walls, as well as the a downed DiZ and the king's unconscious servants on the floor of the audience chamber. The two giant keys that Roxas had dropped on the floor were briefly engulfed with twin flashes of light, and soon enough, they too had vanished.

xxx

King Mickey, Cloud, and Sephiroth ran down a straight flight of stairs, arriving at a pair of large, locked doors that kept the basement levels of Disney Castle secure and impregnable. Or at least, the doors _had_ served that purpose - both of them had been cleanly blown-off their hinges, the numerous locks and security mechanisms built into them lying on the floor, shattered into pieces. Disney Castle's basement halls were the storage place of the legendary Cornerstone, a mysterious jewel that prevented darkness from besmirching the sanctity of Disney Castle.

Clearly, the Cornerstone's magical seals had been broken - massive bunches of thorny vines sprouted haphazardly out of great fissures that had opened in the walls, and had adhered themselves to the walls of the castle's lower levels. The thorny growths stretched as far as the eye could see, in the direction of the Hall of the Cornerstone, in one of Disney Castle's deepest and most heavily-secured chambers.

At the sight, King Mickey rushed forward, but Cloud overtook him with his longer strides, and held him back with an outstretched arm.

"Your Majesty, it might not be wise to rush in like that," the blond former-SOLDIER cautioned, "Who knows what the Organization might have rigged to set on us in there..."

Mickey paused for a bit, then nodded slowly, "Gee, Cloud. You're right - I wasn't thinking straight. So _now_ lets go in!"

The three of them raced down the vine-choked corridors, occasionally seeing a guard or two that had been slammed into the walls by the relentless vines. Entire sections of the corridor's walls had been collapsed by the vines, revealing patches of bare earth and destroyed mortar. They ran on forward, finally seeing a large set of doors before them that had been forced open crudely. The doors were cracked in several places, and the vines were holding them rigidly in place, much like a grotesque, larger-than-life mass of fingers holding a book open.

"They've entered the Hall!" Mickey shouted, as he ran forward, despite Cloud and Sephiroth's shouts of warning.

The mouse king had just crossed the threshold of the Hall of the Cornerstone when a deafening gunshot rang out from in front of him. Fifty feet above him, an ornately-made aqua-glass chandelier from Atlantica exploded into a thousand glittering shards as the shotgun bullet hit it, shrapnel from the detonating projectile tearing through the finely-tooled glass crystals. He froze in place for a moment, watching in shock as the chandelier's pieces fell towards him like a deadly hailstorm of translucent blades.

At that moment, several things happened all at once.

"Your Majesty!" Cloud shouted, rushing forward to pull the king back, out of path of the dropping glass. He managed to shove the king out of the way, just as another bullet whizzed through the air where Mickey had been standing. It exploded into a shower of shot-pellets, pelting the three of them with small shards of metal.

"AERA!" Sephiroth bellowed, conjuring a powerful twister, and sending it flying at the chandelier's shards, just mere feet above Mickey's head. He saw a glimpse of white in front of the cornerstone, and instinctively directed his conjured windstorm in that direction.

The twister sucked-up the glass shards, and sent them flying back towards the white-suited man whose shotgun had fired the shot that destroyed the chandelier. With a smirk, the man vanished into a swirling mass of dark energy, just as the twister blew through the space where he had been standing, just feet away from the monolithic Cornerstone. He re-appeared behind the king and his two escorts, leveling his shotgun at the trio. Cloud had just helped Mickey to his feet, and his Buster sword was drawn.

"What a pleasure to meet you all again," the man laughed, cocking back the hammer of his weapon, "And under such beautiful circumstances, too!"

"Rufus ShinRa!" growled Sephiroth, as he drew his Masamune blade from its sheath, "I'll bet the Turks are here as well, you _scum_!"

"Oh, the Turks are _here_, all right... And calling me scum?" huffed the man, as he narrowed his eyes at the trio, his shotgun poised to shoot, "YOU are the scum here, you myopic fools!"

BANG! He fired the shotgun once again, sending a veritable cloud of shrapnel and pellets towards them. Several quick swipes from Sephiroth's Masamune and Cloud's Buster Sword managed to deflect all of the shotgun's fired projectiles, but Rufus was already vanishing into a cloud of darkness.

"Goodbye for now!" he jeered, as he was enveloped in a mass of black energy, "Enjoy the show!"

The man named Rufus ShinRa disappeared, and from behind them, Mickey, Cloud, and Sephiroth heard a familiar voice calling out their names. A sound of glass shards crunching under leather shoes was heard, as their newest adversary stepped up into their line of sight, from where he had been standing behind the Cornerstone.

"Rat, brat, and prat," drawled the red-headed man who had accompanied Rufus and the other two Nobodies earlier, "Nice to see you here-"

"Reno!" this time, it was Cloud who snapped out the man's name, "You'll never get the Cornerstone!"

"Oh, this piece of shit?" Reno waved his left hand lazily behind his back, pointing in the Cornerstone's general direction, "That was just a distraction, heh!"

"Distraction?!" chorused the three of them, as they realized the true meaning of Reno's words, and the gravity of the situation.

"Of course, we wanted dear lil' Roxie back," Reno said, twirling his baton around, "But we knew that DiZ would have put you two on his case. Ergo, we dealt with the Cornerstone, hah!"

"Reno!" the bald Turk Nobody called-out, marching up to his fiery-haired ally, their female companion by their side, "The bombs are armed, so lets get out of here. Five minutes is all we've got."

"I've set them to blow when tampered with," the woman added cheerfully, brandishing a handgun in her hand.

"Fuckin' A, Rude, Elena!" Reno perked-up, waving flamboyantly at Mickey and the two swordsmen, "Tata till tomorrow, people!"

Just as the three Turks started to disappear into individual portals of darkness, Cloud lunged towards them, his sword drawn. Reno swung at the sword with his baton, sparks bursting out of its tip. The baton hit the sword, sending arcs of electricity coursing down the sword's length, and up into Cloud's body.

"AHHH!!!" Cloud cried, as voltage surged through his body.

"You people just _love_ to make things complicated, don't you?" came Elena's voice, as the three Turks vanished in their entirety.

Cloud fell to the ground in a heap, faint wisps of smoke trailing out of his clothes and body. His gloves had been nearly burned-off by the electrical assault by Reno, large welts burnt into the palms of his hands.

"CURAGA!" snapped Sephiroth, waving his sword over Cloud's body. A green light engulfed the blond's body, and soon, all his injuries had vanished, magically healed by the curative spell.

"They're after Sora!" Mickey shouted in panic, just as Cloud got to his feet, "How could we have been so stu-"

"Well, you were stupid enough for my purposes," said a hooded figure from where he stood near the Cornerstone's base, "Roxas is _ours_, now!"

"Organization XIII!" exclaimed Sephiroth, his sword in a striking position, "Release Sora, now!"

"His name," the figure replied, just as a portal opened-up next to it, "Is _Roxas_."

Out of the portal stepped the raven-haired Turk named Tseng, clutching Roxas by one of his arms. Roxas tried to say something, but Tseng slapped him brutally across the face, stunning him temporarily. The blond teen looked at Mickey, desperation in his eyes.

"King Mickey! Hel-" was all Roxas got out before Tseng drove an opened palm into the small of his back, sending him to his knees on the ground. The Turk grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, much like an errant puppy would be handled.

"Let him go!" shouted Mickey, his fighting key appearing in his hand.

"You think you can intimidate me with a Keyblade?" the figure snorted disdainfully, "How pathetic."

"You-" Mickey began, just as the explosives rigged to the Cornerstone's base let out a series of shrill, beeping sounds.

"My work here is done," gloated the robed Nobody, as tendrils of dark energy rose out of the floor, coiling around him, Tseng, and Roxas, "Goodbye. _Forever_."

The Nobodies vanished, just as the bomb exploded with enough force to shatter a meteorite into a whole lot of rocky debris. Mickey reflexively threw-up a barrier spell, but even that was nearly overwhelmed by the sheer force behind the explosion. He, Cloud, and Sephiroth were blown back into the corridor outside the Hall of the Cornerstone, flaming debris and falling brickwork liberally filling the spaces outside the spherical region of the barrier spell.

xxx

Upstairs, Donald Duck, Court Mage, and Goofy, Royal Knight, were jolted back into consciousness by a powerful tremor that shook the audience chamber's floor. Bits of plaster and broken bricks fell in tapering streams from the highest vertices of the audience chamber, landing with soft patters on the carpet's remains, and breaking-up into tiny pieces where they missed the enchanted carpet's soft length.

"WAK!" Donal quacked in a panic, "WHAT WAS THAT?!"

"Gawrsh!" Goofy yelped, as he evaded a falling piece of stone, "Someone's shakin' up the castle!"

"The King!" exclaimed Donald, waving his staff around furiously, "I think he's in danger!"

"What about him?" Goofy pointed at DiZ, who was still unconscious, lying in a heap of tangled red-and-black robes at the foot of the throne.

Without saying a word, Donald waved his staff, hoisting the motionless man into the air with a nifty levitation spell.

"Done! Now lets find the King!" he said.

The two of them rushed out of the audience chamber, their levitated 'baggage' hovering slowly behind them.

The scene that greeted them outside the audience chamber was that of a disaster zone. The corridor outside the chambers had been blown-out from their foundations beneath the ground, the floors collapsing into the decimated subterranean levels as though a tornado had been let loose to wreak havoc beneath the ground of Disney Castle's very walls. Only with some luck and extraordinary balancing acts did Donald and Goofy manage to avoid falling down into the dark depths that seemingly were all that remained of Disney Castle's lower levels.

Sections of the floors were still intact, and what little fragments of magic that were left were sluggishly repairing the damage done, with smashed stone and metal flying back into their original places. But the pieces didn't stick, and merely fell to the shadowy basement level ruins as quickly as they had ascended to their former positions.

To their horror, small wisps of dark energy were seeping out of cracks in the ground, as though the vile powers were struggling to claw their way out of the ground.

Goofy's eyes grew wide with shock, "Oh, my!"

Donald looked even more disbelieving as he saw the damage that had been done, "Master _Yen Sid_ himself wove the enchantments that protected this castle! WAK! Whatever it was must have been one heck of a destructive force!"

"Urgh..." DiZ's voice moaned, from where he was hovering behind the two Disney castle servants, "Wha... what happened?"

"Something messed-up the castle real good!" reported Goofy, mopping his brow with a hand, "Ah-yuk! The basement levels have been destroyed!"

"Basement levels?" DiZ asked, getting shakily to his feet as Donald lifted the levitation spell that had been propelling him slowly through the air, "The Cornerstone!"

His words were like a bucket of ice-water that had been thrown in the faces of his two companions.

"Oh, no! This is terrible! What are we going to do?!"

"Gawrsh! The Nobodies must have tried to destroy it!"

DiZ silenced them with a booming command, "SILENCE!"

The two of them stopped babbling for a moment, as they turned to face the red-robed man, his one visible eye glowing with a strange sort of energy.

"There shall be more Heartless lurking around this area now that the Cornerstone has been destroyed," DiZ stated, shaking his head, "Be on your guard! I shall bring us down into the basement levels, and we shall find His Majesty before we do anything else. Understood?"

Donald and Goofy nodded rapidly, and soon enough, DiZ teleported all three of them down into the dark ruins of the lower floors.

xxx

Roxas stood before a silver-haired Nobody dressed in the black robes that Zexion wore. Four white-robed Nobodies without any discernible faces hovered with their arms crossed in the air behind the silver-haired man, their bodies shifting ever so slightly in a jelly-like way every time a mild breeze blew past the high balcony they were standing on. Surrounded by all manner of white-and-gray buildings, the five Nobodies and Roxas were on a small veranda about fifty feet above a large, arena-like expanse of white-paved ground.

"Welcome back, Roxas," the Nobody said, nodding his head, "It's good to see that you have returned to your rightful place."

"_My rightful place?!_" Roxas snapped angrily, "I don't even know where we are!"

"We are in Castle Oblivion, in the World That Never Was," the Nobody said, standing up straighter, "My name is Xemnas, though you may refer to me as 'Superior'."

Roxas rolled his eyes, "Yeah, right. If you ask me, all of you people are nut-jobs."

"I will let it slide this time, but once you regain your memory, I will not tolerate any further displays of insubordination," Xemnas said, glowering fiercely at Roxas, "Eight, get in here!"

A portal opened up behind Roxas, and another, taller, Organization member stepped onto the already-packed balcony, its face obscured by a hood.

"Eight, show Thirteen to his quarters," ordered Xemnas brusquely, as he and his four Sorcerer Nobodies started moving towards a portal that he opened off the edge of the balcony, "Orientate Thirteen about things, and prepare him for Namine to restore his memory. Call her here to get the job done, and then report to me once the restoration is complete. Do NOT bring him to her workshop. Understood?"

"Crystal," murmured the hooded Nobody in a distinctly male voice, leaning back lazily against the balcony's stone railings.

Xemnas jumped-off the balcony, vanishing into his portal with a flurry of black robes, his four minion Nobodies following him into the dark gateway.

For a few moments after Xemnas' portal closed, the hooded newcomer Nobody sighed.

"Freakin' show-off," the figure muttered, extending a hand to Roxas, "Nice to see you back here again, Roxas..."

Roxas glanced at the Nobody's hand, before gingerly stretching out his own hand and shaking the stranger's, "Um, hi?"

"You don't remember me?" there was a distinct pleading tone to the Nobody's voice, "At least my name? Please, pretty please? I'm beggin' here, Roxie!"

Ignoring the stranger's jarring nickname for him, Roxas hesitated for a moment, before shaking his head sadly.

"Nope, not a thing."

"Ah, well. Screw this shit," said the Nobody, as he threw back his hood. He appeared to have a messy lot of spiky red hair that cascaded halfway down his back, and black tattoos in the shape of upside-down teardrops beneath his bright, green-colored eyes, "The name's Axel. Got it memorized?"


	6. Restoration

**Restoration**

"The name's Axel. Got it memorized?"

Roxas rolled his eyes in disbelief. And _this guy _was supposed to be a member of the notorious Organization XIII? If the Nobody who called himself the Superior's words were accurate, this guy was Number Eight of Thirteen, too. On second thought, Roxas reflected, maybe that was the reason why this 'Axel' was ranked among the lower half of the Organization.

"I think that even that Zexion dude and his buddy Tseng can do better than that, Axel."

"Emo kid and Mr. Stick-up-my-ass?! Oh, fine!" Axel threw his hands up with a disgruntled huff, "Just follow me through the portal I'm gonna open, alright? I'd advise holding my hand so you don't fall out of the passage into some other place in the castle."

"Just where _are_ we?" Roxas asked, belatedly catching up to the fact that the two of them were still high-up on a balcony way above the ground of an unknown location. If what Axel had said was the truth, then they were in a castle of some sort, it seemed.

"Castle Oblivion, on The World That Never Was," Axel replied, as a swirling mass of dark energy bubbled out of the floor, seemingly looking like a grotesque plant that had sprouted from the narrow distances between the white tiles, "Here's the portal."

"Weird name, huh?" Roxas said, following Axel as the red-headed Nobody stepped into the portal. He grabbed Axel's forearm, and soon enough, the portal closed behind them, sending them both into a mad tumble of head-over-heels translational motion in a seemingly endless morass of swirling dark energy. Every now and then, a doorway to another place would be visible somewhere in the recesses of the liquid mosaic of the energies around them.

Roxas greedily took-in the sights through those doorways; a man laying out cards on a table, a veritable mountain of a man sharpening a large axe, a mullet-headed man playing a curiously-shaped instrument much like a guitar, a pony-tailed man with an eye-patch who was brandishing a rifle at a target board...

Distracted by the sights, he didn't notice another doorway opening behind him. Before he or Axel had even become aware of its opening, he felt a strong hand grip him firmly by the scruff of his shirt, and yanking him backwards. He lost his grip on Axel's forearm with a yell, and even before Axel could see who it was that had opened the portal, he was alone in the corridor of darkness.

Roxas had been nabbed by someone else in the Organization, it seemed.

xxx

Being so suddenly yanked out of the corridor of darkness hadn't been easy on Roxas. He now felt vaguely ill, and his vision was blurry to the point of being totally useless. Around him, he heard two figures moving around slowly, conversing with each other in hushed tones.

"Did you get him?" said one of the two, with a man's voice, in tones that were soft, but which had a distinct feel of authority beneath them.

"Of course I did!"snapped back a feminine voice, in brusque tones, "What did you take me for? Some kind of incompetent?"

"Well, you DID haul him out of there too fast. He hasn't yet adjusted to travel via portal-"

"Oh, bollocks!" snarled the woman, "He's done it before, why couldn't he do it again?"

"His memory-"

"KINGDOM HEARTS CAN TAKE HIS MEMORY! IT'S EASY ENOUGH TO FABRICA-"

"Easy, Larxene... I think his eyesight will be coming around soon..."

True to the man's words, Roxas was soon able to see clearly again, and for the first time since he had been separated from Axel, he saw who his apparent abductor Nobodies were. The three of them, himself included, were in a large room that wouldn't have been inappropriate for usage as an auditorium, if its size was anything to go by. Presently, the large room appeared to be empty, the three of them being the only living things in it, on a small platform in the center of the room.

Both of the Nobodies were dressed in the Organization's black robes, and both were armed. The man was holding a large, pink-bladed scythe which matched his shaggy mop of hair, and the woman was toying with several short throwing daggers, her blond hair slicked-back into a pageboy cut, two loose bangs trailing like antennae over her head.

Somehow, Roxas managed to slur something out at them, "Your hair's weird."

"Whoop-de-doodie-doo," said the woman in a sarcastic voice, "You noticed."

"Now, now Larxene," chided the pink-haired man, "He _has_ lost his memories, you know. Go easy on him, will you?"

The woman fell silent, and vanished into a portal of darkness with an angry utterance of 'Fuck you.'

Her exit left the two of them alone in the room, and the man turned to face him with a dramatic sigh.

"Well, Larxene's always been a little wild and temperamental... But how are you, Roxas?"

"What do you think?!" the blond-haired teenager snapped in reply, "What's the big deal? You get that... _psycho _ladyto grab me out of that portal, and now you confront me alone in this room. I think I'll be feeling fine and dandy under these circumstances! Huh?!"

His pink-haired companion in the room had the audacity to ignore his brief rant, and merely went on speaking, "Do you remember who I am?"

"No," Roxas replied flatly, "And all this memory crap is really starting to bother me."

"What if," the man said, holding up a hand, "I could get your memories restored?"

"Oh, really?" he snorted, "And how are you going to do that? Work some mumbo-jumbo magic on me?"

"I myself have no control over such powers," the man said, waving his hand, his scythe turning into a long-stemmed rose, "But I do know someone who _does_ have such abilities. And we're quite well acquainted, at that."

Roxas regarded the stranger suspiciously, narrowing his eyes, "How do I know that you aren't some pedophile or something?"

"Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed the man, his flower vanishing in a burst of red petals, "Heavens, no! I am not into those sort of... activities... Larxene and I have enough between us, thank you very much."

"Too much information," quipped Roxas, somehow pitying the guy - that Larxene woman must have been a dominatrix of some sort, "But really; is it possible to restore my memories?"

"It _is_ possible," his mysterious companion nodded, "For the Memory Witch, restoring lost memories shouldn't be that difficult a task."

"Then..."

"You can trust me, Roxas," said the man, holding out a gloved hand, "After all, I _am_ your senior in the Organization. The name's Marluxia."

xxx

Axel was in a panic now. If anyone else had been in his shoes, they would have been in a panic, too.

After all, he _had_ been separated from Roxas, and the kid could have fallen out through any number of portals in the maze of corridors and rooms that was Castle Oblivion. Or worse, Roxas could have fallen out onto the streets of Betwixt and Between, the Brink of Despair, or anywhere else on The World That Never Was. Dangerous as those locations already were, he was sure that Roxas would be quite safe wherever he was, despite his forgetting how to summon his keyblades.

Fortunately for him, he had caught a glimpse of an Organization robe on whoever it was that had nabbed Roxas, and that alone had been his clue as to Roxas' whereabouts on the darkness-shrouded world that was Organization XIII's seat of power.

So far, he had dropped-in on Lexeaus, Vexen, and Zexion. The three basement-dwelling Organization members had not seen Roxas since Zexion and the Turks had brought him back on-world, and so Axel had decided to move upwards to try and question Xigbar and Xaldin instead. The two senior Organization members hadn't been any help at all, and had even asked him whether or not Roxas was actually back in the castle.

Reasoning that Saix and Xemnas wouldn't be bothered to pull such nonsensical pranks, and recalling that Demyx was practicing playing his sitar alone that last time he'd seen him, Axel portalled directly into Luxord's room, and saw the Gambler of Fate sitting there alone, playing Patience. The red-headed Nobody hoped that his lost charge would be there, but even if he wasn't, Luxord's powers would certainly be capable of pinpointing Roxas' location rather accurately.

"Ah, Axel!" greeted the blond cardshark, his cards flying up into the air and shuffling themselves, "Fancy a game of poker?"

"Not now, Luxord," Axel replied, shaking his head, "Did you see Roxas? Someone nabbed him from me during portal-travel just now..."

"Oh?" Luxord said, cocking an eyebrow, as his cards dropped back onto the table, rearranging themselves into the exact layout of his nearly-abandoned game of Patience, "So you thought I was the one who took him?"

"Hey, you can never tell nowadays!" Axel defended himself, spreading his hands, "Especially since we've had those strange disappearances of our lesser Nobodies of late..."

"Hmm, that IS a problem, alright," nodded Luxord, as he carried-over a fresh card onto his existing train of cards, "But the thing about your query is, Roxas is no longer here, from what I can tell."

"What?!" Axel shouted, his face first showing disbelief, then dawning realization, "No, they couldn't have-"

"Marluxia _has_ done it, Axel," Luxord said calmly, placing down his card, and ending the game of Patience, "You'd best be on your way, I think. But I have no idea whether they have left, or not."

"You _knew_ about this, and you didn't report it to the Superior?!"

"Patience, Axel. All will be resolved in time to come-"

"How can you be so calm?!" Axel snapped, "We have a possible situation on our hands here!"

"Don't think that I am unaware of your orders from the Superior," Luxord said slowly, shuffling his cards, "But know that I place my money on whoever it is that I see holds the winning hand, and the Superior knows this very well. As of yet, it is still to early to call it a game."

Though the blond Nobody didn't look up from his cards, Axel got the distinct feeling that Luxord knew more than he was letting him in on.

"You'd best be going, Axel."

With a cry of frustration and panic, Axel portalled out of the Gambler's room. Luxord merely shuffled his cards once again, before laying them out on the table in a fan, the cards somehow organizing themselves by suit and value.

"Axel, Axel," mused Luxord, as he put down the Ace of Spades, "It is inevitable - Roxas will be the end of us, don't you know?"

xxx

Marluxia had opened-up a portal to a dark, shadow-filled forest. The earthy scent of humus was thick in the air, and the ground was soggy with moisture that had been trapped under the bed of fallen leaves that carpeted the forest floor. Up ahead, about a hundred feet from where the two of them stood, was a faint glimmer of light, looking as though the forest's edge was just several moment's brisk walk away.

"Where are we?" Roxas asked, swatting a mosquito that had bitten him on his arm.

"The woods at the edge of Twilight Town," Marluxia answered, as he walked towards the illuminated region of the forest, gesturing for Roxas to follow him, "The Memory Witch, Namine, resides somewhere close to our present location."

"Namine?"

"She is the only unique Nobody that has power over memories. With her help, we can manipulate your memories, and maybe restore them."

"Oh..."

"Ah, you can see her workshop now," Marluxia announced, pointing at something ahead of them.

Roxas squinted in the dim light of he forest, and saw what looked like a large, white-colored mansion ahead of them. As the two of them walked further forward, the tree canopy became less dense, and more light reached them through the filter of green leaves that had been so thick in the heart of the forest. Within several seconds, he and Marluxia had left the forest, and were walking towards the strange mansion, that was surrounded on all sides by dense forest.

Birds ands insects chirped, and a gentle breeze blew past them as they walked up to the mansion's gates. The gates were solid, wrought-iron grilles, and a large sign had been chained around its lock, which read as:

CROWN PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING.

"An empty mansion?" Roxas asked skeptically, upon reading the sign, "Looks a bit too clean for that."

"It _isn't_ empty, Roxas," Marluxia said, walking up to the gates, "Namine and some guardian Nobodies live here."

"Alright, whatever you say. But how do we-" Marluxia casually walked THROUGH the grille gates, "- get in?"

"Just pass through the gates, Roxas," the pink-haired Nobody said, tapping his foot impatiently.

Roxas swallowed, and tried taking another step towards the gates. The imposing metal grilles seemed so solid, so _real_, but then he took another step forward...

... And passed right through the iron grille, just as Marluxia had done.

"What... How did..." Roxas stammered, not believing that he had just passed through a seemingly solid gate.

"Zexion and Xigbar worked on the gate," Marluxia told him helpfully, "It's an illusion, actually. Even if the windows got smashed, no one wuld see or hear anything from the outside. But only Nobodies can see and get past all of these illusions."

Roxas nodded, before his mind processed the other half of Marluxia's explanation, "Wait. What did you say?"

"The gate's an illusion," Marluxia replied, looked slightly impatient, "So now with that settled, could we please move-"

"No, not that," Roxas said, staring at Marluxia, "The next thing you said."

Marluxia looked at him in bewilderment for a moment, before realization dawned on him.

"You _are_ a Nobody, Roxas. Didn't you know that?"

xxx

Larxene had just finished sharpening her kunai blades when a portal opened in the middle of her room, and Axel stepped out of it, looking supremely pissed-off.

"Hey there, pyro-boy," she drawled, "What's-"

"Where's Roxas?" Axel cut her off, his voice hard.

"Ooh, after your little _boyfriend_ already?" Larxene teased, her eyes glowing with a hint of sadistic pleasure, "I wouldn't know - he should be with Marly, somewhere around this castle."

"Don't lie to me, Larxene!" before Larxene knew it, she was slammed into, and being held up against the wall by the collar of her robes, one of Axel's chakrams being held at her throat, "_WHERE IS ROXAS?!_"

Somehow, despite her situation, she smirked evilly at the red-haired Nobody who was holding a deadly, bladed object to her neck. Axel saw her expression, and felt his stomach tying itself into a very tangled knot.

"I left them in the Hall of Empty Melodies," Larxene sang, toying with one of her kunai, "I don't know _where_ they are _now_."

She fell to the floor in a heap, as Axel let out a horrified exclamation, and vanished out of her room.

xxx

"So I'm a Nobody?" Roxas asked softly, as he followed Marluxia up a fancy-looking set of stairs in the white mansion, barely thinking straight.

"For the sixth time, Roxas, yes," Marluxia replied, walking up to a white door at the end of a long upstairs corridor, "But Diz and those other fools tampered with your memory, and made you think otherwise."

'Where is my heart' Roxas asked himself, clutching desperately at his chest, 'No. No, no NO!'

"We are here," Marluxia declared, as he gripped the handle on the white door, "Be nice to Namine, alright?"

He opened the door, and a man's voice greeted him.

"Well hello, hello, hello," Diz said in his deep voice, from where he stood behind a white table. Behind him were King Mickey, Cloud, Sephiroth, and a silver-haired boy holding a weapon that resembled a keyblade in some aspects, "It's Marluxia, isn't it?"

"Diz!" Marluxia snapped, his scythe materializing in a flurry of falling rose petals, "Where is Namine? What did you do to her?"

"She is safe," the one-eyed man replied in a low voice, "No harm has been done to her."

"So you scum survived the bombing of the Cornerstone, after all," Marluxia hissed, "I wonder just _how_ you lot managed to survive the stuff that Rufus and the Turks rigged..."

"Light will always overcome the dark," King Mickey said, his keyblade in a position to start striking any moment, "The Cornerstone was not destroyed by your bomb. After some extensive repairs, the castle shall be back to normal."

"But fortunately for me, _you_ all aren't as resilient as that over-sized marble, nor can you be fixed when broken!" Marluxia cackled as he stepped into the room, three scythe-wielding Nobodies in patched-up, gray-colored overalls appearing right behind him. Roxas stepped back nervously, as he saw his former captors having a confrontation with his current ones.

"Let her go now, and leave this place!" the Organization member spat, his three minion Nobodies entering the room after him.

"We are taking back what is rightfully _ours_," hissed Diz, his visible eye glowing menacingly, "And we will definitely not be leaving without Sora!"

The silver-haired boy chose that moment to speak up, brandishing his strange weapon, "Where's Sora? What have you done to him?"

Marluxia chuckled, "Nothing that you don't already know about, you imbeciles!"

Sephiroth then drew his Masamune sword, glaring at the Nobody before them, "Will you surrender Sora to us, or not?"

"To Hell with you!"

Marluxia and his three minion Nobodies lunged forward, their scythes glinting in the stark white light that illuminated the room. Cloud, Sephiroth, Mickey, and the silver-haired boy rushed forward to parry their blows, while Diz stepped back, revealing a small-sized girl that had been standing behind him.

At that moment, Roxas decided to run.

"SORA!" Diz called after him, "DON'T RUN! WE AREN'T GOING TO HURT YOU!"

But Roxas was already fleeing down the dark corridors of the mansion, and was headed for another door somewhere else on the same floor.

xxx

Roxas ran into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. To his dismay, the room contained no suitable hiding places save for innumerable shelves of books that wouldn't have served well in that capacity. A large statuette was placed at one of the room's sides, in between two large bookshelves. The statuette was of a dragon-like creature, and its gaze was focused upon the red carpet in the center of the room, upon which no shelves had been placed.

"Damn!" Roxas cursed under his breath, as he took-in the sights within the room; it seemed that he had run into a dead end, "Where to hide?"

"He's in here, I think!" muffled cries came from the other side of the book-room's door. Spurred into action by those words, Roxas tried to squeeze himself behind the statuette, which was an ideal enough spot for him to remain invisible to whoever it was which wanted to enter the room.

Th sounds of minion Nobodies materializing outside the room were just barely-audible, but Roxas heard the distinct sound of clashing blades; whatever Nobodies had been stationed outside the door must have been those scythe-holding ones, or some others armed with blades.

As he finally managed to squeeze behind the statuette's large base, he saw a small lever on the join between it and its base. Out of curiosity, he flicked the lever, hoping that maybe a better hiding spot might be made available through that action of his.

He hadn't been expecting the entire floor to fall-away, though, and when he took a peek out from behind the statuette, he saw that the entire area covered by the red carpet had vanished, revealing a large set of steps heading down towards a dark entrance to a hidden corridor.

"Oh, wow," he marveled for a moment, as he left his hiding spot behind the statuette, and observed the new exit to the book-room.

Before he could even take a single step towards the stairs, Diz's voice spoke up from outside the room, "Cloud, tear-down that door!"

Roxas ran down the stairs without a second thought, even as several Nobodies resembling lance-wielding dragons appeared in front of him. He clumsily tried to turn around, but one of the Nobodies caught him with its free claw.

_"Lord Roxas,"_ the Nobody said to him, bowing its head, _"What orders do you have for us?"_

Despite his confusion over the current situation, and being addressed as 'Lord' by the strange Nobody, he decided to make the most out of his apparent command over the minion Nobodies.

"There are intruders out there!" he pointed towards the doors, "Can you handle them?"

_"We, the Dragoons, shall protect you from them, Lord Roxas!" _chorused the eight Nobodies in a determined voice, as they flew towards the door, which was already splintering as Cloud chopped-away at it using his Buster Sword.

Uttering a quick word of thanks to the Dragoons, Roxas ran down the dark corridor at the base of the stairs.

xxx

"Almost!" WHACK! WHACK! CRUNCH! "There!" CRAAACCCKKK!!!

With a final swing at the solid, wooden door, Cloud demolished the library's door with a grunt. Just as Riku fired a Dark Aura at the door, sending its remnants flying inwards, eight Dragoon Nobodies flew out of the room towards them, sharp lances menacingly pointed at them.

"Nobodies!" shouted Diz, as he sent a Blizzard spell flying at one of them, which was easily evaded, "Namine, stay close to me!"

The Memory Witch quietly moved to stand closer to her captors, even as they fought tooth-and-nail with Xaldin's highly-trained minion Nobodies.

"HAH!" shouted Cloud, as he cleaved a Dragoon into two, the lance-wielding Nobody disintegrating into a smoky mass of darkness as it was defeated. Meanwhile, Riku had also been busily hacking-away at the Dragoons, and four had already fallen before his weapon, the Way To Dawn. Mickey had taken down two more, and Diz himself had frozen one of them into a block of ice.

When all eight of the Dragoons had been defeated, Cloud and Riku rushed forward into the library, Diz, Mickey, and Namine following close behind them.

Diz saw the opened passageway to the basement, and smiled slightly, "Well, well, well. Sora is playing right into our hands..."

xxx

Axel ran out of the forest surrounding the white mansion, and sprinted towards the main doors. Somewhere upstairs, a fight was obviously going on; the window of Namine's drawing room was smashed, and just as he flung the mansion's main doors open, one of Marluxia's scythe-wielding Harvester Nobodies flew out of the broken window, a fireball in its wake catching up to it and incinerating it in mid-air.

"ROXAS!" he yelled repeatedly, as he stood in the foyer of the mansion, his shouts echoing off the many hard surfaces in the grand entrance hall of Namine's workshop, "ROXAS!"

Looking up, he saw that the dust on the stairs had been kicked-up, and bore the distinct mark of footprints. One set of footprints was large, and the other set of them was noticeably smaller.

Axel felt a surge of adrenaline, as he raced up the stairs, and ran towards Namine's drawing room. The door was open, and inside, he could see Marluxia fighting with someone who was probably Sephiroth. A mass of silver hair flashing past the doorway confirmed his suspicions; it was Sephiroth.

"Marluxia!" Axel shouted, summoning his chakrams in twin burst of flame, "Where's Roxas?!"

"He took off!" his junior in the Organization replied, slashing ferociously at Sephiroth with his large sickle, "He'll be somewhere in the mansion!"

More Harvesters and Dusks appeared in the drawing room, which had been apparently cleared of all the drawings once kept in it. Aside from Marluxia, only Sephiroth was in the room.

"Find Diz and the other intruders!" Marluxia ordered, as he blocked a stab from Sephiroth's Masamune, "They escaped from this room just minutes ago!"

Without bothering to ask Marluxia where Namine was, Axel turned around, and made a dash for the mansion's library. To his horror, he saw that its door had been broken open. Axel ran forward, and saw that the passageway to the underground storage area for the stasis chambers had been opened, and that several burn marks now marked the metal walls of the subterranean corridors.

xxx

"Where the Hell are all these Nobodies coming from?!" cursed Cloud, as he cut-down a particularly vicious Gambler Nobody that had sent an entire deck of razor-edged cards flying at him, followed by several rounds of exploding dice.

"It's almost as though they _know_ where we're gonna be!" Mickey shouted, as he sliced through a Dragoon's winged body, causing the hapless minion Nobody to disintegrate into darkness, "Someone in control here must have sent them down to keep us busy!"

Riku slashed at a Dancer Nobody that had tried to beat him down, and was now sending spheres of dark energy at the Dusks that were trickling in from the side-passages into their current corridor location, "Busy?! For what?!"

"Sora must be ahead!" Diz boomed, as he sent several fireballs flying at some Gamblers, "Namine, stay with me! If they get you, our work here is futile!"

The silent girl quietly stayed close to him, clutching desperately at a large manila folder that was filled to its capacity with all manner of sketches and drawings.

As the last Nobody - a Dancer - fell before Mickey's keyblade, the five of them moved on, walking further into the maze of passages that lay open ahead of them.

xxx

Run. Run faster. Run further.

Those three words were what Roxas kept repeating to himself in his head, as he ran aimlessly like he had never done before through a complex maze of dimly-lit corridors deep beneath the mansion's floors. He had encountered several groups of Nobodies along the way, which he had sent back towards the entrance of the subterranean maze, hoping to delay Cloud, Diz, and whoever else was behind him until he could find a way out.

Quite suddenly, he found himself in a large room, with several computer consoles and large cables all over it. Spying a small door at the other side of the room, he smiled to himself, ignoring for a moment the ache in his legs and the exhaustion in his body.

"Bingo!" he cried happily to no one in particular, as he walked towards the door. After all, most computer rooms had an exit, right?

He gripped the door handle in one hand, and turned it, opening the door...

... To reveal nothing more than _another_ corridor, with a row of large objects resembling flower buds lining each wall, with ten-foot gaps between each and every one of them.

Once more, several Nobodies materialized, and this time, Roxas recognized them as the ones which called themselves the Dancers. A scattering of Dusks also appeared, and as usual, he sent them all back the way he had come, towards the book-room. The strange assortment of Nobodies made various signs of understanding his orders, and left him alone in the corridor once more.

He plodded on, and saw that most of the bud-like objects were dusty and probably hadn't been used in a while. Eventually, he came to a turn in the corridor, and saw another door just ahead of him.

Muttering several choice curses at whoever it was that had designed this place, he stepped forward and opened the door, letting out an exclamation of shock at what lay within the room.

In the center of the circular, white-painted room was a larger version of the bud-shaped objects that he had seen in the corridor, a thin band of gold running on the floor around it. But the differences that were obvious aside from its size was the fact that it was a bright white in color, with golden edges to the teardrop-shaped pieces of its exterior, and the fact that it had no visible dust on it. Roxas figured that the object had probably been used recently, and he stepped towards the thing, crossing over threshold of the golden circle on the floor that had the object sitting in its center.

Roxas felt a mild tremor run through the floor as he stepped-over the golden line, and he let out a cry of surprise as the bud-shaped thing slowly started to _open_, the gold-trimmed pieces on its 'skin' sliding downwards over each other, and fanning out like the petals of a blooming flower. As the object finally opened-up completely into a lily-like structure, Roxas got a good look at what had been stored inside its hold.

To be more specific, _who_ had been placed inside the object.

He was looking at a sleeping teenage boy, who could have been his mirror image save for a few differences in his appearance. The sleeping boy's spiky, chocolate-colored hair was much like his own, but the boy's tan skin was quite at contrast with his own.

At that moment, his memories returned to him, the tampering and altering all cast aside instantly as he was once again reunited with his own other half. All at once, he realized that this would be his last moment, and that he would cease to exist shortly after seeing the strange sight of his quasi-doppelganger. Somehow, somewhere deep inside him, he knew that he was looking at no other than Sora, the person whose name he had been called with, and who was wanted by Diz and the others for their own selfish vendettas.

Just as Axel ran into the room through the open door, Roxas felt a searing pain flaring to life in his chest, and a brilliant white light flashed out of the opened stasis pod, dazzling him and Axel.

All of a sudden, Sora opened his startlingly blue eyes, and Roxas felt his body becoming _lighter_, just for that brief period of time, before the pain in his chest blossomed into a raging inferno of agony that consumed his entire being. Axel's frantic cries of his name were all he heard before he faded into unconsciousness, and as the world around him fizzled out into darkness.


	7. Recovery

**Recovery**

Axel staggered back due to disorientation, as Sora awoke from his stasis, a blinding light having flashed out of the opened stasis pod. In front of him, Roxas fell to the floor, clutching at his chest as though his absent heart had suddenly stopped or seized-up. The blond-haired, younger Nobody lay on the floor for a few moments, before his body started to become steadily more blurry, as though he was a picture with badly-done pixels.

"Roxas!" the red-haired Nobody tried to step forward and help his onetime close friend, whereupon an invisible wall of energy thrust him backwards with incredible force.

Roxas had already started to vanish, his form becoming more blurry and translucent at the same time, like dust that was being washed out of a glass. From where he had been thrown back into the wall, Axel saw Roxas disappear completely, and Sora looking around the room in a confused manner. In a split-second after his Nobody's disappearance, Sora fell to the floor, convulsing wildly. Axel knew that Roxas had just been forcefully reunited with his Other, and that soon enough, the blond-haired Key of Destiny would be little more than a memory in the corner of Sora's mind.

The Flurry of Dancing Flames couldn't take it any longer, "NO!!!"

"Uh..." Sora grunted, shaking his head as though to clear it of a minor ache, before slurring out his first word in a long time, "What?"

Just then, the door to the stasis chamber, formerly just slightly ajar, burst open with a forceful BANG! Cloud, Riku, and Mickey rushed in, followed by DiZ, who had been holding Namine's shoulder securely in his grasp.

"DiZ!" Axel spat, as he summoned his chakrams, "I should have known it was all your doing, you cursed abomination!"

"Axel, wasn't it?" the bandaged man sneered, "Oh no... I can't claim ALL the credit for this plan..."

"LIAR!" a gout of flame shot towards DiZ, only to be stopped by a magical barrier thrown-up by Riku, "ALL LIES, ALL OF IT!"

"If you want to hear people telling lies," Mickey said in his tinny voice, "Ask your pink-haired friend!"

With an angry snarl, Axel summoned several of his Assassins, only to see that the fool named DiZ was holding Namine securely in his grasp, and that the other three of his opponents had their weapons drawn, as well as being positioned strategically around Sora.

As he surveyed the situation, he realized that he was both outnumbered and potentially trapped. Axel stood there glaring dangerously at them, chakrams in hand. Before they could do anything, he summoned a portal of darkness, and stepped backwards into it. Casting one last look of longing towards Sora, who had just struggled his way onto the floor, he turned back to face his adversaries.

He suddenly threw both of his chakrams at DiZ's three lackeys, and dashed forward, snatching Namine out of DiZ's grasp, the red-robed man's hastily-cast Thundara spell barely-missing him, hitting the wall instead. Cloud, Riku and Mickey, occupied with deflecting the chakrams Axel had flung at them, didn't get to stop the Organization's Number Eight, as he grabbed Namine.

"I'll get Roxas back," he snarled, "Soon."

With that, the Organization's number Eight and the Memory Witch vanished in a burst of dark energy.

xxx

In Namine's workshop - the drawing room - Marluxia felt a slight wave of disturbance rippling through the air, and soon enough, Axel had materialized with Namine, at the room's entrance. Sephiroth had already ran out of the room quite sometime ago, after one of Marluxia's summoned Harvesters had nearly amputated his arm, its scythe ripping a large tear through the silver-haired swordsman's black leather outfit.

"Marluxia!" Axel shouted, stepping forward, "You lied to me!"

"Whatever are you talking about?" the Graceful Assassin smirked, as he saw Namine standing behind his fellow Nobody, "Ah, you retrieved Namine. That's a bonus in our favor."

"You _told_ me that Roxas would have his memory recovered!" Axel snapped, "But you went ahead with the Restoration, anyway!"

Marluxia flicked a lock of his shaggy pink hair behind his right ear, "Well, you _knew_ that it would have been necessary to Restore him, eventually."

"No it damned well wasn't!" the Flurry of Dancing Flames retorted, "Roxas is twice as good as Sora could ever be! It would have been sufficient-"

"He has no heart!" Marluxia finally yelled, "And he cannot help us to see our plans through to completion!"

"_Your_ plans be damned! I only agreed to this because you told me we'd get Roxas back!"

Marluxia threw his head back with a sniffle, "You fool. What meaning does Roxas have to me? _Sora_ is the one whose powers shall clear the path for my ascension to the throne..."

Axel glowered at his junior in the Organization, before summoning his chakrams once again.

"You are a traitor to the Organization," he spat, "And I should end this right now!"

"Axel, Axel," Marluxia chuckled, "As I recall, _you_ came to _me_, asking me to help you recover Roxas' memories. After all, Namine is my charge, is she not?"

"And if you were to try and put a stop to me, Larxene will blow the whistle on you to our beloved Superior," finished the pink-haired Nobody, stepping towards his two allies, "So I'd say that it would be in your best interests to stay on my good side for now, hmm?"

Realizing that he had been lured into a trap, Axel glared at Marluxia, his expression furious. He vanished into a portal of darkness, Namine along with him.

Alone in the thrashed drawing room, stepping gingerly over the splintered remains of a white table, Marluxia stood deep in thought for a few moments. After a while, he opened-up a dark portal, and stepped into it, vanishing from the messy wreck that had once been Namine's drawing room.

Things had just gotten a whole lot stickier for his plans...

xxx

Sora staggered to his feet, looking around warily. He felt slightly close to nausea, and his limbs felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds. His vision was blurry at best, and the dryness of his mouth became evident as his coarse, dehydrated tongue scraped along the equally parched roof of his mouth.

Several shapes were visible around him, in various shades of red, black, and silver. One of the shapes took a cautious step towards him, and he reflexively tried to step back, stumbling on his numb legs, which could have been lengths of rubber hose for all he could feel in them.

"Sora," the shape called out, raising what looked like a hand, "You are safe now. Welcome back."

Bewildered, dehydrated, and fatigued, Sora fell to the ground in a graceless tangle of limbs as darkness reclaimed him once again, mere minutes after his restoration to his own body. Diz looked wearily at the unconscious teenager on the floor in front of him, before turning around to face Cloud and Riku - Mickey had left the room to look for Namine, and was probably making his way to the Drawing Room.

"Pick him up," the bandaged man ordered, "And we'll be bringing him back to the Islands."

Within minutes, the trio had left the stasis chambers with their unconscious treasure, and the room was empty for the first time in a year.

No one had noticed the tiny bubble-shaped lens of a video camera in the far corner of the room. The machine had been activated ever since Roxas had stumbled into the room, and had recorded everything that had occured since then with its mechanical eye.

All of the digitized recording data were relayed to an invisible satellite orbiting Twilight Town, which then passed on the information to its counterpart just several light-minutes away, high-up above the eternally-empty cities of The World That Never Was.

xxx

A hologram projector shut down as it finished replaying the video data it had received from one of the intelligence satellites orbiting The World That Never Was. The video had been brief - just over thirty minutes, but had been enough to get its point across.

Just two meters away from the deactivated projector, Xemnas stood at the head of the meeting table in Castle Oblivion's main conference chambers. He was glaring at the other sixteen Nobodies seated around the table, and he certainly didn't look pleased. In fact, his facial expression could be described as one of extreme fury, and his yellow eyes somehow managed to radiate an aura of the emotion that he couldn't have possibly felt for himself.

After all, lacking a heart made all emotions null and void, anger unfortunately included among them.

"So," he said, his voice quaking ever-so-slightly, "It seems that we had some traitors in our midst. How unfortunate."

Several of the Nobodies seated around the table shifted uncomfortably in their seats, as they digested their leader's words. Indeed, two of their number had gone missing shortly after the debacle at Namine's workshop in Twilight Town, and now their council was short of three members, two of which had been the traitors the Superior was currently discussing.

"Marluxia orchestrated the entire incident," Xemnas went on, "And once Larxene caught wind of Axel's return, she too fled from the Castle. What have I to say about this, I do not know..."

"Axel," mused Rufus, "No offense, but I find it highly-suspicious that you knew where Marluxia was headed after he grabbed Roxas."

The Organization's white-clothed Security Chief leveled a wary glance in Axel's direction, "Or how you knew it was Marluxia who nabbed Roxas in the first place..."

His red-headed colleague glared at him, before issuing a heated reply, "I checked-in with the others, that's how! When no one else seemed to have seen Roxas, I went to Marluxia to ask... Needless to say, he wasn't around, and so I went to pressure Larxene into talking."

Muffled murmurs were heard along the length of the meeting table, as the Organization's other council members discussed this new information among themselves. The hushed exchanges were interrupted by Saix, as he spoke up rather loudly.

"Xigbar! Zexion!" barked Saix, ever the Superior's faithful lackey, his voice lacking any respect whatsoever for his seniors in the Organization's council, "You two are in charge of the Military and Intelligence, respectively. What happened here?"

Xigbar glared at Saix through his one usable eye, mouth set in a determined grimace, "Shut up, _mutt_."

"You are our subordinate, just as we all are the Superior's," Zexion added, flicking a stray lock of his slate-colored hair behind an ear, "The Superior has already received our reports on the issue at hand."

"Indeed I have," Xemnas nodded, turning to face Saix, "Saix, mind your attitude. You might be my right-hand person, but that doesn't make you above rank and office in the council."

The blue-haired Luna Diviner leaned back in his seat, baring his fangs slightly, "Yes, Superior."

"Now, shall we have a recap of your reports?" Xemnas asked, as he flicked through several sheets of paper that had been placed on the table in front of him, "The others would be interested in our recent... misfortune, I think."

Zexion nodded, and Xigbar stood up from where he sat.

"Well, our minion Nobodies did record a major disturbance at Namine's workshop sometime earlier today," the Freeshooter said, adjusting his eye-patch over his damaged eye, "Beyond that, all of our other security systems didn't report any anomalies."

"What about the forced entry by DiZ and Mickey?" asked Vexen, his voice dripping with contempt, "They apparently opened a portal directly in the drawing room, it seems."

"They have managed to capture several types of our minion Nobodies of late," Zexion replied, "And they figured out how to utilize the specimens as temporary gateways to our inter-world corridors of darkness."

"Aside from that, how did they manage to get past all the minion Nobodies stationed at the mansion?" asked Rufus, as he cleaned his recently-used shotgun, "I recall that we had more than a hundred high-ranking minion Nobodies assigned to the mansion for security purposes, didn't we? And what about the Dusks?"

"They were all destroyed," replied Zexion calmly, shocking several of his colleagues at the table.

"All destroyed?!" exclaimed Demyx, his eyes wide with disbelief, "Even my twelve Dancers?"

"How is that possible?" demanded Xaldin, "I had _sixteen _Dragoons posted there!"

"Your sixteen Dragoons were all around the library," Xigbar snorted, "My twenty-one Snipers were all stationed _inside_ the corridors that led to the stasis chambers."

"Don't forget the Gamblers and Dusks we also had there," Luxord added, fanning-out his deck of cards on the table, "If my memory serves me correctly, I sent twenty-one of my Gamblers to Namine's workshop. And there were fifty-two Dusks too, I think."

Axel growled, "Hey, all eighteen of my Assassins were mulched, if that makes you all feel any better."

"We can't _feel_, idiot!" snapped Vexen, ever the technical Nobody.

"Enough!" commanded Xemnas, silencing all of his subordinates with a glare, "Given that Sephiroth himself was there at the mansion, we are to count ourselves lucky that we just lost those minion Nobodies. The losses of our minion Nobodies are substantial, but insignificant compared to what happened in the stasis chambers. _We have lost Roxas_."

The conference chamber was as silent as a tomb following his statements. Demyx and Axel looked downcast, while Vexen, Lexeaus, and Zexion seemed to be involved in a hushed discussion among themselves. Saix was following Xemnas' example by glaring at everyone else, whereas the Turks and Rufus didn't seem to be that fazed by the news. Xigbar and Xaldin were gesticulating rapidly at each other, seemingly in an argument of some sort. Luxord shuffled his cards in an indifferent manner, and Professors Hojo and Maleficent just sat there quietly, poring over their notes.

"Namine has now been moved to a secure location in this Castle," Xemnas continued, finally taking a seat, three hours after the meeting had started, "We shall not be giving DiZ and his lackeys any more chances to work against us from within our own territories."

"Axel, we shall reconvene once this entire disaster has been averted. Your failure to safeguard Roxas has been appaling, to say the least."

"Zexion, Xigbar, and Luxord. I want the Castle's Labyrinth to be set for random reconfigurations after every fifty feet walked, instead of the usual five minutes."

"But Xemnas," Xigbar protested, "Shiftin' space about like that in such narrow time intervals will be straining the Labyrinth's struture to the maximum!"

"I wouldn't advise such a rapid frequency of shape-shifting," Luxord agreed, as he lay down his cards one-by-one on the table, "Over time, the Labyrinth shall become unstable, and its separate components might even spill over into each other."

Zexion nodded slowly, as he pondered the possible repercussions of making their fortress' internal layout change itself in such a rushed manner, "Indeed. Any additional stress from too many rapid reconfigurations could cause the Labyrinth to collapse in on itself, and could also result in the creation of random doorways all over the Castle."

"See to it anyway," Xemnas snapped brusquely, "Get Hojo and Maleficent to help you or something; I want the changes made, understood?"

"It will be done, then," Luxord said, his tone clipped and overly-polite.

"Moving on," Xemnas said, turning to Rufus and the Turks, "I want you five on standby until this whole thing blows over. All minion Nobodies in the Castle have been alerted of possible intrusions in the near future, and so we shall need the five of you to be ready for anything that comes this way."

"But sir," argued Rufus, "We do not know how to make our way through the Labyrinth that well. We'd get lost, ourselves!"

"You lot can portal in-and-out of the Labyrinth," Saix growled, earning himself a glare from Reno.

"Well yes, but it wouldn't be that practical," Tseng corrected him, "May I suggest that several wormholes be opened in the Labyrinth for our usage?"

"Wormholes?" Vexen asked, perplexed, "Wouldn't they be potential gateways for any intruders to navigate the Labyrinth more efficiently?"

"I meant identity-keyed wormholes," the black-haired Turk replied in a diplomatic tone of voice, "Such as those we used at the world called Halo, with those creatures called the Flood."

"Ah, those special wormholes," Professor Hojo snickered, "Very useful, weren't they? And I'd say that they might even prevent the Labyrinth from collapsing in on itself if too many fast changes are done."

"How so?" asked his female counterpart, her purplish eyes glinting strangely, "If anything, creating wormholes all over the Labyrinth would place extra stress on the already over-taxed structure-"

"I'm thinking along the lines of vulcanized rubber," Hojo added helpfully.

"Vulcanized rubber?" Maleficent asked, before realization dawned on her face, "Sulfur cross-links between rubber polymer strands... Oh..."

Indeed, despite being evil, demented scientists, Maleficent and Hojo were very familiar with basic chemistry. Familiar enough to know about the way sulphur bonds could be added between parallel strands of rubber polymers to add elasticity to the stuff itself. Even when pulled, strectched, or squashed, vulcanized rubber would retain its original shape, due to the support of the sulphur bonds.

"The cross-links would certainly help," mused Xigbar, "Yeah, I'd say that the wormholes could actually make the rapid shifting safer for the Labyrinth. Just need to key them to us and the Turks."

"So it's settled, then," Xaldin rasped, "We shall alter the Labyrinth, and put Security and our minion Nobodies on standby."

"We shall gather again once the changes have been made to the Labyrinth's structure," Xemnas announced, as he disappeared into a portal of darkness, "I would advise all of you to stay in your quarters until the wormholes have been put in place, so that none of us gets lost as the maze is being reconfigured."

One-by-one, the Organization's controlling members disappeared out of the room, save for four of them.

"Sooo," Zexion let his voice trail off, as he looked straight into Axel's eyes, "Looks like we have an interesting case on our hands."

"Don't you have a labyrinth to help reconfigure?" Axel asked sarcastically.

"That is a smaller issue than the one at hand here."

"Indeed," Vexen laughed, "You let those two get their grubby hands on Roxas. How-"

"I _didn't_ deliberately let them get Roxas!" Axel snapped, slamming his fist down on the solid mahogany table, "What do you think I am?! A traitor like them?!"

"We'll never know, will we?" came Lexeaus' quiet reply. The towering, muscle-bound Nobody had decided to stand up at his place, "After all, your preoccupation with retrieving Roxas was unusual enough on its own..."

"He was - IS - a valued member of the Organization, and a loyal friend!" snarled the Flurry of Dancing Flames somewhat defensively, before Zexion cut him off.

"Tsk, tsk, Axel," the Cloaked Schemer chuckled, "You almost sounded like an Other back there."

"What do you mean?"

Vexen jumped into the conversation, "Hah, calling Roxas a friend, indeed! You seem to believe that friendship could exist between Nobodies, who have no heart!"

"He is our ally!"

"WAS our ally," corrected Lexeaus, as he stared absently at the two emblems engraved on the wall behind Xemnas' chair, that of the Heartless and the Nobodies, "We have no idea whatsoever if his re-integration into Sora would have affected his mind in any ways..."

"And so until we can successfully isolate him within Sora's mind and extract him once again," Vexen nodded, "He cannot be fully trusted."

Axel glared at them for a moment, before summoning up a portal, and stepping into it. Before the portal vanished, his parting shot at the trio could be heard:

"Bullshit."

The 'Basement Trio' of Castle Oblivion stood in silence for a while, before Vexen spoke up.

"So what do we do now?"

Lexeaus rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "They are sure to try and mount an assault on the Castle, with Sora."

"They wont make it past the labyrinth," Zexion said dismissively, only to have Vexen shoot a doubtful glance in his direction.

"They got past it once, with Roxas," the Chilly Academic pointed out, "And I wonder just how effective your modifications will be in keeping them wandering."

"We'll be dealing with them directly, that's why," the slate-haired Nobody responded simply, drawing puzzled looks from his two closest allies in the Organization.

"Zexion," Lexeaus rumbled, "What do you mean?"

Number Six smirked, "Xemnas and I have devised a plan to capture Sora."

"Oh?" Vexen's tone was bordering on anger - he didn't like being kept out of the loop with regards to any plans being made.

"Our security recording told us exactly where they have hidden for the time being," Zexion replied with a note of satisfaction, "So Xigbar shall be heading there with several attack squads of elite Nobodies soon."

"The Destiny Islands?" Vexen smiled sadistically, "Those pathetic pieces of land don't have any defenses whatsoever! They wouldn't stand a chance!"

"Foolish choice for a base of operations," was all that the Silent Hero had to offer on the small isles that were the matter of discussion currently.

"Exactly my sentiments, Four and Five."

Within minutes, all three of the assembled Nobodies had vanished into separate portals of darkness, leaving the meeting room empty once again.

xxx

Elsewhere, far away, a teenage boy returned to consciousness with a start, giving a good shock to the woman that had been tending to him while he was out for the count. She very nearly dropped the bowl of food that she had been eating from, as he sat up abruptly in his bed, cerulean eyes opened wide.

"Sora!" she squeaked in surprise, as she placed her bowl of porridge on the bedside table, "You're awake!"

"Uh..." he blinked his eyes, looking confused for a moment, "What?"

"Sora, are you alright?" the woman asked, leaning forward to look him in the eye, "You could rest a while more if you need to-"

"No need for that, Aerith," came a commanding voice from the doorway.

Aerith whipped her head around, to see who it was that was at the doorway. Leon leaned against the doorframe in a relaxed manner, looking as stoic as he usually did.

"DiZ wanted to see him as soon as he came round," the gunblade-wielder remarked, "And so now's the time."

"He's disoriented, Squall-"

"Leon."

"Oh, for crying out loud... _Leon_, he isn't in any shape to face DiZ yet!"

"Who said I'm not in any shape to face this dude named DiZ?"

As soon as Sora spoke, Aerith and Leon fell into shocked silence, though only Aerith showed any visible signs of surprise on her face.

"You... Know who we are?" Leon asked hesitantly, breaking the momentary quiet.

Sora rolled his eyes, as he deftly hopped out of the bed, and stood next to Aerith, "Duh, Mr. My-name-is-Leon-not-Squall and Aerith!"

"Sora, you remember!" Aerith gushed, before grabbing him in a crushing hug.

"Ack!"

"Well, well," said a voice from behind Leon, making even the composed man jump a little, "Our lost friend has returned to us..."

Leon hastily stepped aside to allow DiZ passage into the room, and the red-robed man sent an approving glance in Sora's direction.

"Welcome back, Sora."

"Do I know you?"

"Ah, so your memories weren't completely returned to you during your restoration," said DiZ in reply, shaking his head, "A pity... Do you still know what a Keyblade is?"

Sora smirked, "You mean this?"

He held out his right hand, and with a flash of bright light, a keyblade materialized in his hand.

DiZ positively glowed with happiness at the sight, "Ah, good! But do you remember how to use it?"

"Sure," Sora shrugged, "No problem."

"Good," DiZ said, as Aerith and Leon cast apprehensive looks at each other, "We need you to fight, soon."

"What?" Leon asked in bewilderment, "So soon? I thought-"

"The first Nobody scout ships are in orbit above us even as I speak," DiZ said calmly, as though he was commenting on the weather.

Leon and Aerith immediately let out exclamations of panic, and rushed out of the room, heading for the control center, leaving Sora alone with DiZ in the room.

In a casual manner that was anti-climatic to the extreme, Sora spoke to DiZ.

"What's a Nobody scout ship?"


	8. Debriefing

**Debriefing**

Cid Highwind, the chain-smoking engineer who also doubled-up as the Commander-In-Chief of the Destiny Island armed forces, paced rapidly before his fifty assembled troops, chewing up a cigarette as though it was a succulent cigar instead of a cheap Lady Luck branded smoke. He glared up at the darkening clouds above the Islands, which were already swirling around and meshing together as though a gigantic hand was collecting all of them and mixing them into one colossal thunder's head. It didn't escape his notice that every now and then, bright flashes of light would flare to life for a second or so, illuminating the inside of the cloud like a great, smoky lantern up in the night sky.

Currently, he and the bulk of the Destiny Island armed forces were standing at the top of Fate's Hill, the only hill on the Destiny Islands, which rose to a proud elevation of fifty feet above sea level at its peak.

"All right, you sons of mothers!" he barked at his troops, his cigarette still clenched firmly between his two rows of tar-stained teeth, "We've got a whole ass-load of Nobodies and Heartless incoming. If that ain't a bitch, I don't know what is."

A few of the soldiers squinted up at the mass of churning clouds above them, while a few more shuffled their feet nervously. The others remained silent, their only reaction to Cid's words being tightened grips on the triggers of firearms, the hafts of swords as well as daggers, and magic staffs.

All of them had been driven from their home worlds by the Organization's relentless rampage through the stars. Most of them came from Traverse Town, the one place that was supposedly safe from the Nobodies. This in itself was a testament to their willingness to fight, given the horrors of Traverse Town's destruction. In fact, atrocities of great magnitude were often referred to as 'Traverse Town Incidents', due to the sheer amounts of bloodshed that had occurred on the quiet world once known as Traverse Town, now little more than a lifeless mass of rock floating in space.

Cid spat out the butt of his cigarette, and turned around to face the oceans surrounding the Destiny Islands, which were just over two hundred feet away from Fate's Hill.

"The Nobodies have come to destroy this world. As they did with so many others," he said gruffly, casting a weary glance at the churning waves of the water's surface. It looked almost as if the sea itself was unsettled my the disturbance up above it, way up in the sky, "They are here, my fine troops, to pillage, plunder, rape, and murder!"

The assembled troops made various noises of assent, and the cocking of the safety catches on several firearms was heard in the silence, which so far had only been broken by Cid's speech and the sounds of thunder and breaking waves.

"All I have to say about this," Cid continued, "Is that these islands are our home! And if they want these little pieces of land, we sure as heck ain't gonna take it standin' down!"

Cheers erupted from the troops, and Cid resumed speaking, and his voice rose to an angry bellow "WE ARE ALL GOING TO COME TO GLIMPSE DEATH TODAY! IF THOSE SONS OF BITCHES WANT TO TAKE OUR LIVES AND OUR LAND.... WE GIVE 'EM HELL BEFORE WE DO!"

More cheers were heard from the troops, only to be cut short by the panicked squawk from a lookout troop's walkie-talkie.

"This is Sentinel One!" the soldier reported, his voice distorted by static and fear, "We have Heartless and Nobodies incoming, from the northern side of the Islands!"

"MEN, TO ARMS!" Cid boomed, even as his troops were already rushing towards the Island's northern coastline.

xxx

"So..." Sora said, dragging out the word slowly, "What are these Nobodies up to? All I can recall are the Heartless and Maleficent."

DiZ nodded, "That is correct. Maleficent indeed controlled the Heartless for a while, alongside her allies from other worlds."

"Allies?"

This time, it was Merlin who answered him, "Jafar. Hades. Oogie Boogie. Captain Hook. Ursula. All of them were also defeated by you, if you may recall."

"Oh, yeah!" Sora nodded enthusiastically, "I remember that! With Donald and Goofy, right?"

"Yes," Diz replied, "What happened after all that, do you remember?"

Sora scrunched up his face for a moment, trying to recall what had happened after his adventures across Gummi space with his two loyal companions, "Nope, not a thing."

"You faced the Heartless of my former student, Xehanort," Diz informed him, shaking his head, "And you managed to destroy it, as well as sealing Kingdom Hearts with the aid of King Mickey and your friend-"

"- Riku!" Sora interrupted, eyes wide, "Where is he?!"

After a moment's pause, he blurted out his next words, "And what about Kairi?!"

"She is hidden in a safe place, Sora," Merlin answered casually, waving a hand in the air and conjuring a cup of tea for himself, "As for Riku..."

"He isn't hurt, is he?!" Sora asked, his voice holding a note of desperation, "Tell me-"

"He is safe and well now," DiZ responded in an assuring voice, "Though he was somewhat damaged by the Nobodies when they almost got him for good. Vexen, Zexion, and Lexeaus aren't very kind to their experimental subjects, or so I hear."

"He was _experimented_ on?! What did they do to him?!"

DiZ seemed to mull over the question, while Merlin appeared to be rather disturbed by the thought of the issue in concern. Sora stared at them, unable to comprehend why they couldn't answer a simple question like the one he had just asked.

"Well? What did they do to him?!"

"They tried to make him into a Keyblade master," DiZ replied levelly, "By infusing copious amounts of darkness into his heart. The fact that he had been trapped in Kingdom Hearts itself didn't help him much; it could have been said that being trapped there with King Mickey and the Heartless had in fact weakened his heart and made him more susceptible to their experiments."

"So... He's alright now?"

"Sometimes, he gets into brief fits. And he has nightmares. But other than that, he is considerably normal, given the circumstances."

Sora squinted suspiciously at DiZ and Merlin, "You sure about that?"

"Absolutely," Merlin said firmly, "Besides, we have put him on prescription for-"

He never did get to finish his sentence, for a piercing alarm started to ring in the computer control room. DiZ rushed towards a computer console, and within minutes, Leon, Aerith, and a ninja-imitating woman rushed into the room. Sora recognized the hyperactive woman immediately.

"Yuffie?!"

She perked up visibly upon hearing him call out her name, "Sora?! Glad to see you're awake!"

"Yuff-"

"We'll just have to catch up later, 'cause now we've got a shit-load of hostiles incoming!" snapped Leon, standing in front of a large sheet of glass that had been mounted on the wall. Formerly transparent, the large pane was now translucent with a vague blue tint to it, and was covered with various lines, squiggles, and dots.

"What's that?"

"A battle map," Yuffie answered simply, shrugging, "And a damned accurate one at that."

"Send out the distress call, Aerith," DiZ said calmly.

"Trying to, but the other side isn't responding."

xxx

Half a mile out to sea from the Mukah Head Lighthouse, two hooded figures stood with arms crossed on the broad back of an Aquatank Heartless, watching the various Nobodies and Heartless that were attacking the Destiny Island Armed Forces. They had been standing there since the start of the battle, and were quite put-off by what they had seen. Apparently, some wise-ass had decided to train the Islanders in combat tactics, for they had lasted far longer than initially anticipated.

"The Dusks seem to have been totally eliminated," commented the lankier of the two figures, eliciting a grunt from his companion.

"Those hillbilly island folk have been taught well," scoffed the stockier of the two, "We'll need to send in reinforcements."

"Didn't we just send in the Snipers?"

"Not enough. They'll be overrun soon, fifteen minutes at most."

The lanky figure sighed, "Xigbar, we didn't pack that many troops with us."

"I did pack some of the cyberspace Heartless, though."

"Jamming tactics?"

"Exactly what I was thinking!"

"Oh well, lets jam those radio signals they have up there."

"I like the way you think, Demyx."

Demyx shrugged, lowering his hood and taking in a deep breath of the fresh ocean scent that surrounded them, "Might as well knock out their lights while we're at it."

"If you weren't so hot on Zexion, I'd do you."

"Up yours, Xiggy!"

"I wish."

Lighting crackled overhead as the Nobody scout ship in orbit dispatched several more Heartless, their diminutive bodies charged with electrical energy. The eight Strafer Heartless disappeared into portals of dark energy, materializing seconds later right above the Destiny Island's town square. Their eyes glowed with mysterious energy for a while, and within seconds, all the radio signals on the Islands had been disrupted.

xxx

"Battle status?" DiZ asked, his voice akin to that of one who was bored or weary.

Aerith listened intently to the information being fed to her from a set of headphones before answering, "Three battalions of Heartless incoming, and two battalions of Nobodies already engaged at the Northern Coast."

"Mushroom Rock?" Merlin asked nervously, adjusting his mage's hat.

Leon shook his head, still studying the glass battle map, "Negative on that one. They've only reached the Mukah Head."

Fuzzy images surfaced in Sora's mind, as he heard the status reports being announced in the control room. Mushroom Rock... Mukah Head... All those names sounded familiar, and yet alien at the same time. He decided to cautiously ask a question to try and clear up the confusion in his head.

"Isn't... Mukah Head the cluster of large stones with the lighthouse on them?"

"Yes, Sora," Aerith replied, as she slowly turned a dial on the radio control panel in front of her, "DiZ, we've lost the signal!"

"Disruption?"

"I think so, yes."

"Sora, come with me," Leon said, drawing his Gunblade, "Time to see if you really remember how to use that Keyblade of yours."

Yuffie gasped, "Leo, you can't be serious!"

"Yes, I am," he replied cooly, "DiZ? Merlin?"

"Go ahead," replied Merlin, even as DiZ nodded, "He'll be fine."

"Got it. Follow me!"

Sora summoned his Keyblade, before running out of the control center, hot on Leon's tail.

xxx

"HYAH!" Cid bellowed, as he slashed at a nearby Lance Soldier with his javelin, the Venus Gospel. The Heartless disintegrated into a dust cloud upon being eviscerated, a faint pinkish glow being just barely visible as the the heart it had captured was freed. Spitting at the spot which the Heartless formerly stood at, he looked up, and saw something that made the blood drain from his face.

To be more specific, _several_ somethings had made him go pale and accidentally unclench his jaw, dropping his half-finished cigarette to the rocky ground. The several somethings in concern were actually six purple-and-black Heartless that had materialized at the edge of the Mukah Head rock cluster, and which were now scuttling in a crab-like manner towards the nearest Island defenders.

"DEVASTATOR ALERT!" Cid cried, as he drew his pistol, and opened fire on one of the four-legged, tank-like cyberspace Heartless. The bullets merely dented the purple Heartless' exoskeleton, causing the six of them to rush towards him.

Not seeing any other visible options, he let out a hoarse battle cry, and charged towards them, javelin poised for attack.

xxx

Leon and Sora stepped out of Aerith's house - also known as the control center- in a hurry, and looked towards the Northern Coast. From where they stood, they could see the fighting quite clearly; it didn't look pretty, what with numerous corpses littering the ground where a defender or two had fallen.

"Sora, we'll have to get the radio waves back online," Leon said quietly, as he took in the sight of the eight Strafers hovering fifty feet above the town square, "Those Strafers are preventing us from contacting Hope Archipelago for heavier firepower and reinforcements."

"Those things, eh?" Sora squinted slightly to discern the shapes of the aerial Heartless that were disrupting the radio signals, "They did this? So we'll kill them and get the signals back up, huh?"

"Yes."

"Good. Lets do this!"

The two of them ran towards the town square, weapons drawn and ready for battle.

xxx

"Well, well!" chuckled Xigbar, "What have we here?"

"Eh?" Demyx asked, seemingly distracted at that point in time. The mini-tornado he had been forming out of sea spray collapsed into nothingness as he turned to stare at Xigbar, "What happened?"

"Our quarry," the Freeshooter announced with a hint of satisfaction, "Is out and about."

Demyx grinned, "Shall we?"

"If you mean intercept them before they get to the town square, the answer's yes."

The two Nobodies summoned up portals of darkness, and stepped through them, vanishing into thin air.

The Aquatank they had been standing on let out a snort of bewilderment, before diving down under the surface of the sea.

xxx

"Try a Fira spell. Should work well enough against the Strafers."

"Why not Thundara?"

"They're Lightning elementals, Sora."

Sora smirked and nodded, "Ah, I see. FIR-"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, kiddo," an amused voice said from behind him.

Sora and Leon whipped around to see two humanoid figures standing about fifty feet behind them, their identities concealed by the hooded robes worn only by Organization XIII's elite members.

"Organization XIII!" Sora yelped, as Leon stepped forward and leveled his Gunblade at the two Nobodies.

"What are you doing here?" the brunette swordsman demanded in a voice that was about three degrees colder than his usual tone, "Call off the Strafers now, or else-"

"You'll do what?" snapped the shorter of the two Nobodies, a large, dart-laden rifle appearing in each of his hands, "Something like _this_?!"

Leon jumped aside with just a second to spare as a sphere of black energy burst out of the ground where he had been standing. The energy sphere exploded as it rose into the air, sending Sora and Leon down on their knees forcefully.

"Gravity... Guns..." Leon hissed, as he tried to get to his feet, but was stopped by what felt like two invisible hands pressing down on his shoulders, "Xigbar!"

"DING, DING DING!" shouted the gun-wielding Nobody, as he shook his head and lowered his hood, "GUESS WHO WINS THE MILLION-MUNNY PRIZE?"

"Xigbar?" Sora asked, narrowing his eyes. That name rang a bell somewhere, "I know you..."

"Sure you did, kiddo! We were buddies and all!" the Freeshooter exclaimed in an exasperated manner, "Demyx, see to it that the... next wave hits town soon. Preferably on the those sad little generators in the building they insist on calling a power plant."

Demyx smirked, and summoned his weapon of choice; a durable, magically-made sitar.

"Hate to do this to you folks, but..." he said in a voice sweet enough to have been poured over pancakes for breakfast, "DANCE, WATER, DANCE!"

In the distance, water churned and roiled at the Northern Coast, as Demyx picked up a morose yet fast-paced tune on his sitar. Within twenty seconds, a towering wave had risen out of the ocean, and was moving towards Mukah Head rapidly.

"NO!" Sora shouted, but it was too late. The wave swept across the lighthouse outpost, taking out all the humans on the rocky cluster with one swift stroke. Several Heartless and Nobodies disintegrated upon being hit by the huge wave, but six large, crab-like Heartless were merely swept up into the wall of water, their stubby legs flailing rather comically.

Demys struck a rumbling bass note, and the wave picked up momentum, surging towards the Island with increased speed, the six purple Heartless being thrown about inside the wave's roiling, watery insides as it accelerated.

"Any last words, Leonhart?" Xigbar asked sweetly, "Or requests? I can give you a fast dea-"

"GRAVIGA!"

Xigbar whirled around in confusion, momentarily relinquishing his grip on Leon and Sora, "What the-"

He crumpled to the ground in a heap as Merlin's gravity spell hit him head-on. Demyx, eyes wide with shock, somehow managed to respond to the newcomers to the fight despite the fact that Xigbar was pinned to the ground and that his summoned water-wave was rapidly collapsing due to the sudden distraction. Dozens of sitar-wielding water clones burst out of the ground before him, dancing their way towards Merlin and DiZ, who had just arrived at the town square.

DiZ snarled at Demyx, before spitting out his next move, "BLIZZAGA!"

A blast of freezing cold air blew forward, turning the group of water clones into a collection of identical ice sculptures that were trapped in the middle of pirouettes, twirls, and leaps. Several of the frozen clones fell the ground as they were immobilized in mid-air during a leaping maneuver, shattering as they hit the dusty earth.

"You scum!" the Melodious Nocturne hissed, sea-green eyes narrowing, "TAKE THIS!"

Water flew out of a nearby well in a speeding funnel cloud that bore down on DiZ and Merlin. The blue-robed master mage waved his hands, and the column of water was blown off-course, slamming into a cottage instead of him and DiZ. The stone cottage, built thirty years ago and a survivor of innumerable tropical hurricanes, collapsed into rubble as the water column hit it. During that one second of having his attention diverted, Merlin accidentally slipped on the gravity spell that had been pinning Xigbar down.

The Freeshooter scrambled to his feet, his one good eye blazing with anger, "YOU WANT GRAVITY?! EAT THIS, MERLIN!"

Merlin and DiZ threw their hands up in the air not a second too soon, conjuring a sphere of energy around Xigbar. The Nobody's howl of agony was audible even from inside the sphere, as his own gravity spell was confined and forced upon himself. Feeling the very earth beneath their feet rumble, Leon threw up a barrier spell as best he could to cover himself and his three allies.

Leon's quick response turned out to be a lifesaver. Merlin and DiZ's conjured barrier burst as Xigbar's gravity spell finally shattered it. Pulsating spheres of gravitational force shot out from the ruptured energy sphere, hitting random objects and pulverizing them.

Demyx yelped in panic, and vanished into a portal of darkness just as one of the stray gravity spells flew in his direction. His portal closed a bit too late, however, and he suddenly materialized about a hundred feet up in the air, flying towards the ground faster than normal gravity would permit. Seconds before he would have hit the ground with predictably bone breaking force, his descent was halted by a large water sphere that appeared out of thin air and encased him. The bubble burst as he hit the ground, but he landed on his feet, quite unharmed save for a slight limp in his right leg.

"Damn it!" Leon cursed, "Don't these Nobodies know how to die?!"

"Nope, we don't!" Xigbar spat, leaning on one of his guns for support; one of his legs was visibly bent at an unnatural angle, "But quite luckily, _you _know how to die very well!"

The Organization's Number II rose up into the air, manipulating gravity to enable his own flight. Without hesitating even for a second, he flew towards his four adversaries, firing down at the ground with both guns in a deadly strafing assault.

"STOPGA!" Merlin shouted, halting all the bullets before they could hit their marks, "DiZ, watch out!"

DiZ turned around and threw up a barrier just in time to deflect a water clone's strike. The water-formed sitar exploded into a million droplets, and the clone was soon another ice sculpture standing awkwardly in the middle of the town square. A split-second later, DiZ shot a series of lightning bolts at Xigbar, who swerved in mid-flight to avoid being electrocuted.

"SHIT!" the one-eyed Nobody cursed, as squeezed off several more shots at DiZ.

Leon and Sora felt the gravity spells on them cease to be, and the two of them leapt to their feet, weapons on the ready.

"DANCE, WATER, DANCE!" Demyx yelled once again, strumming up a crescendo on his sitar, his eyes glowing with a greenish light.

"WATCH OUT!" Sora shouted, even as he ran forward and slashed at the Nocturne, who parried the blow with the neck of his sitar, "THE WAVE!"

Everyone except for Demyx turned to look, and indeed it was as Sora had said; the collapsing water wave had returned to about a quarter of its former towering height, and was moving towards the town square much faster than it had been, now just hitting the beach of the Northern Coast. Leon fired a shot at Xigbar and Merlin sent small-sized twisters at the two Nobodies, but they disappeared into dark portals almost as suddenly as they had appeared.

"He's not controlling the wave any more!" DiZ exclaimed, "Merlin, Sora, Leon! Aid me in repelling the wave!"

"How?!" Sora shouted in confusion.

"Focus on the wave, and _freeze it in its tracks_!" shouted Merlin, thrusting both his hands forward, spell-fire blossoming out of his open palms.

Sora looked nervously up at the wave, and tried to focus on it, as Merlin had said. He closed his eyes and grit his teeth, trying to supply the magical energy needed to stop the wave in its tracks.

"NOW, FOLLOW MY LEAD!" boomed DiZ, "CAST BLIZZAGA!"

"BLIZZAGA!" the four of them shouted in unison, sending forth a massive gust of sub-zero magical energy. The combined spell hit the wave dead-on, freezing a large portion of the wave's central mass.

The wave practically collapsed like a house of cards, the huge iceberg they had formed demolishing an entire grove of paopu trees as it was hurled out of the wave's watery portion. With such significant loss in mass, the wave broke right on the edge of town, its fury reduced but still destructive enough. Houses collapsed and trees were uprooted like seedlings as the wave fell forward, finally halting in its forward motion. A much smaller wave persisted for a bit, but was stopped by the solid stone wall that surrounded the town, which had been built using ancient enchantments and protective spells.

Merlin collapsed to the ground, pale and shaking, while DiZ gasped for air. Leon fell to a knee, his expression being one of pain. Sora felt as though someone had given him a dozen good punches in the gut, and he fell face-down onto the ground.

The cries of the wounded and dying were heard from the northern parts of the island, but not to the four of them.


	9. Migration

**Migration**

Cid Highwind spat out a tooth from where he lay at the base of a large rock that rose out of the sand bordering the Northern Coast of Destiny Island. His body felt as though it had been run through a wringer, and his head hurt as if a herd of zaghnols was doing the Cha Cha all over his brain. The last thing he recalled was throwing his javelin at one of the Devastators that had been sent to engage his forces at the Northern Coast, and then everything had gone blank after the surface of the ocean itself had risen up like a colossal wall of water, and started rushing towards shore. He guessed that he had been lucky, what with him getting a relatively soft landing on the sandy beach, whereas the Devastators had probably been thrown further away onto the harder grounds inland.

"SHIT!" he cursed hoarsely, "INLAND?!" If those sons-of-bitches had made it safely despite being thrown about like rag dolls, they might still have enough wind left in them to go ahead and wreak some pretty nasty havoc on the defenseless townspeople!

He tried to sit up, but felt faint almost as soon as his torso was upright. Falling back onto the sand, he fumbled for a cigarette, before realizing that he was wet. Therefore his cigarettes would have been wet. And therefore, his _matches_ would have been wet as well.

"FUCK!"

xxx

Aerith ran out of the command center, her staff raised into a battle stance. She had finally entrusted Yuffie with manning her communications console while she left to deal with the aftermath of Demyx's summoned water wave, and was now headed for the town square, where all eight Strafer Heartless were still hovering in mid-air, blacking out their radio signals.

"FIRA!" she shouted, sending several large fireballs flying at the diminutive, electrically-charged creatures. Three disintegrated and four more were scorched badly, while the last Strafer managed to evade her spells, instead flying up higher and letting out a series of shrill screeching noises.

"Leon! Sora!" she called out, as she ran into the vicinity of the surprisingly intact town square, "Merlin! DiZ!"

"Over... here..." came a weak voice from the general direction of a collapsed house, and for a moment, she worried that the four of them were trapped inside the wrecked building. Only when she walked behind the house did she allay her fears on that matter, and gain a new set of worries for the time being.

Leon was propped up against the base of a paopu tree, his arm lying limply across his lap. Sora was passed out on the ground, and Merlin was gasping for breath as he massaged his chest with a gnarled hand. DiZ, however, was sitting on the ground and casting spells on Sora that Aerith could only hope were of a curative nature.

"Oh, goodness..." her voice trailed-off as she took in the sights around her in the town square. Besides the collapsed house, a well had somehow been demolished, its mossy brick edges having fallen into the well itself. All over the place were massive indentations and cracks in the hard-packed ground, as if two giant beings had fought it out there. Even a paopu tree had been snapped like a twig, its formerly magnificent plumage of fronds now lying in a messy tangle on the suspiciously wet ground.

"Aerith," DiZ called out, surprisingly calm, though his voice held a hint of steel in it, "We have to do what we thought would never be necessary."

She furrowed her brow in thought, "Leave? Surely you don't mean... No, you couldn't possibly..."

"Yes, that is exactly what I am thinking," the bandaged man nodded, his grim expression somehow discernible through his cloth-swaddled face.

"We can't DiZ! Not after Traverse Town!"

"We HAVE to!" he snapped, standing up with a slight wince as he felt the pain associated with a broken rib that was newly-mended, "They will come in greater numbers now that they know our defenses have been compromised."

"So..." Aerith's voice trembled slightly as she spoke, "Plan Migration?"

"Yes, Aerith. Migration."

"But where? Traverse Town was destroyed totally, Twilight Town has sworn to remain neutral in the war, and Port Royal will fight anyone that lands there!"

"I am aware of all that," DiZ mumbled, staring out at the wide expanse of ocean that stretched out beyond the Northern Coast, "But there is one world you missed."

"What do you mean? All the other worlds..." Aerith took on an alarmed look as she recalled the one world which the Nobodies could never take, which had resisted their assaults even more than Port Royal had, "Narnia!"

DiZ actually gave her a smile, showing off several fang-like teeth, "Indeed. They could never take King Aslan down, so we'll have to knock on his door and hope that he'll grant us shelter in his home."

xxx

Xemnas scowled as Xigbar and Demyx finished their report on what had transpired on the Destiny Islands, and their return without Sora in tow had done little to improve his mood. Saix looked angry as always, and so did Axel, for that matter. Vexen, Lexeaus, and Zexion were discussing something amongst themselves in hushed tones, while Luxord, Xaldin, and Rufus had the nerve to look almost bored by the whole fiasco. Hojo and Maleficent were off touching-up on the labyrinth's reconfiguration process, and the Turks were off on a lunch break while their superiors had their first emergency meeting in years.

"So, they fought back that well, hmm?" Xemnas grunted, his displeasure obvious through his amber eyes, "And even stopped a _tsunami_ from hitting their puny island too badly? Is that what you two have to say?"

"The Superior is most displeased," added Saix, his tone more like a bear's growl than a man's voice.

"Shut it, _mutt_!" snapped Xigbar, glaring at the Luna Diviner using his one good eye, "We tried, and he beat us. End of story."

"Incompetent!" snarled the blue-haired Nobody.

"Lackey!"

"Worthless worm that gnaws the bowels!"

"Oh, give it a rest, will you?!" Vexen said, rolling his eyes in annoyance, "The Keybearer is clearly stronger than he appeared to be, after all. As you may recall, the circumstances surrounding his capture weren't exactly pleasant for us, either."

"Eighty defeated minion Nobodies, one hundred and fifteen Heartless, and two of us in the infirmary for a week," rumbled Lexeaus, nodding with a grim smile.

"Vexen is right," Xemnas intoned, running a hand through his hair, "We'll have to fix the damage to the best of our capabilities, now. Nothing more that we could do, right?"

Several nods of assent were seen in the dimly lit room, and murmurs of agreement were heard.

Xaldin spoke up, "Something bothering you, Axel?"

"What?" the fiery-haired Nobody looked at his colleague, "Nope, everything's fine with me."

"You don't seem happy that we're continuing the pursuit of the Keybearer," Vexen noted, "Your narrowed eyes indicate contempt, and your furrowed brow-"

"Spare me the psychoanalysis!" interrupted Axel, "I'm just worried that we'll lose Roxas. That's it."

"Whatever your reasons may be," Xemnas said, "You _will_ do what you are ordered to. Am I _clear_?"

Axel looked the Superior in the eyes, and gave a small smirk to the white-haired Nobody, "Crystal."

xxx

DiZ watched as four large Gummi ships landed in the airship clearing just outside the town square on Destiny Island. Burly men and gigantic loading machines emerged from the opening hatches of the huge spacecraft, and Cid sat in his temporary wheelchair in the back of a pickup truck, supervising the entire operation. Almost every living being on the Island was present at the airship clearing, their most important possessions beside them in suitcases, bags, trunks, and other traveling cases.

If anyone had visited the homes of the Island folk at that very moment, every house would have been found to be empty, save for maybe things like the occasional TV set, a telephone, broken furniture, or even entire bookshelves with books.

The Destiny Island governing authorities were mostly survivors of the Traverse Town massacre. Most of them still recalled vividly the heat of the flames, the sounds of the dying, and the stench of decaying flesh that had been their last memories of their former home. So when they established a colony on the large island now known as Destiny Island, they had drawn up plans for an emergency evacuation in the event of an overwhelming assault by the Organization's forces.

Only the barest minimum of every Islander's possessions were allowed on the evacuation ships. Large as they might have been, the Gummi ships weren't built to handle large amounts of weight being loaded into their holds.

Now, the community heads of the various small villages on the Island were doing a rushed roll-call, trying to get their respective community folk safely off-world as fast and as safely as possible.

Yuffie walked up the DiZ, "Sora, Leon, Aerith, and Merlin have finished packing up the command center's vital materials. They're getting ready to come here in about... five minutes, I'd say."

"Good," DiZ nodded in approval, "The faster we get out of here, the faster we'll be able to reach Narnia."

"Narnia's a safe world, alright," Yuffie chirped happily, "The last time those Organization freaks tried to stage an assault, Aslan sent them packing, didn't he?"

"He let them go, that's what he did."

"Oh yeah... Something about the Nobody in charge of the assault teleporting away right in front of Aslan, right? Wonder why Aslan didn't try to pounce on him or something?"

"But I don't blame him; Luxord's a tricky one to trap, what with his powers over Time and all that."

"Why didn't he just stop the world in Time until he found the Keyhole?"

"I have no idea, honestly," DiZ admitted, "Time is one of the few things whose inner workings I do not fully comprehend. But Father Time himself was present on Narnia, and he didn't try to stop Luxord, so maybe it was part of the Timeline, after all? I can't say for sure."

"DiZ, we're done with the command center," Leon reported, as he strolled up to the conversing ninja and sorcerer, "And Cid says that he'll be done getting the citizens loaded in another fifteen minutes."

"That's fine. The Organization probably couldn't mount another assault that fast, thank goodness."

"But they do have Luxord on their side..."

"He doesn't simply mess with Time," DiZ shook his head, "Merlin?"

"That Nobody is an unusual specimen indeed," the master mage agreed, "There have been many incidents where he could have taken entire worlds by manipulating Time, but he didn't. Maybe he's just aware of the consequences of tampering excessively with Time."

"Whatever it is, I'm glad the evacuation is going smoothly so far," Aerith piped up, "But are you sure Aslan will allow us to take refuge in Narnia?"

"I have visited Narnia," DiZ replied, "And he has given me his word that we shall be granted asylum on his world. But he noted that we would have to defend ourselves against a witch of some sort on his world, some woman calling herself Empress Jadis. Apparently, she's even trapped the whole world in a state of snow and sleet."

"Wow, sounds like quite a powerful witch!" Sora looked fascinated by the thought of it, "Maybe she's something like Maleficent?"

"Possibly. I have no idea what she even looks like, though Aslan told me to be wary of the woman who 'resembles snow in every aspect; pale, beautiful, and cold'."

"Alright, buckos!" Cid's voice came over the megaphone which he was using to direct the evacuation with from his wheelchair, "We've got very little time, and about a hundred more civilians to be boarded. So leave your belongings, and the loading dudes will collect them all. Once we get to Narnia, you'll get to sort them out."

Various sounds of outrage and disapproval were heard, but the engineer in the wheelchair merely rolled his eyes and starting shouting into the megaphone again.

"Anyone who doesn't agree can step out of here and go home! I DON'T GIVE A SINGLE, STINKING DROP OF SHIT WHAT YOU THINKIN', YOU HEAR?! WE NEED TO GET MOVING, AND WE NEED TO DO IT FAST! SO DUMP YOUR STUFF AND GET ABOARD, _NOW_!"

Things went much smoother for the evacuation process after that.

xxx

Thunder cracked over choppy seas and rain poured down in veritable sheets of water, the midnight sky as dark as Death itself. Far below the black, cloud-covered skies, a ship was being tossed about on the waves like a toy, its sails lashed down firmly to prevent it from being thrown around even more haphazardly by the cutting gales that pummeled it above the waterline while the sea tried to break open the ship from below. The ship's captain bit back a curse as he struggled at the helm, trying to keep the beleaguered craft upright despite the violent waves. It seemed as if the storm would never let up, and an ominous creaking sound in the lowest decks had been reported by the ship's carpenter just minutes ago. Finally, the captain decided that his ship was not going to make it through this storm, not after water had started spurting into his holds from cracks in the hull.

"James!" he bellowed, his voice barely audible through the raging storm, "Get the lifeboats ready for lowering!"

"You certain, sir?" the deck hand shouted back, from where he was clinging on to a railing for dear life.

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! GET THOSE BOATS PREPARED, NOW!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

The deck hand whistled shrilly, calling forth several more deck hands from their wet, cold places next to the masts, railings, and under the deck stairs. They worked as quickly as they could, trying to get the rain-soaked, swollen ropes through the pulleys and into the metal eyes bolted to the lifeboats. Curses were shouted, metal slammed against wood, and knots tied as fast as possible, as the men rushed to get the lifeboats swung out over the ship's sides. Even once they had swung out the boats, the storm continued to make their lives problematic by buffeting them with winds powerful enough to slam the little boats against the ship's sides. Portholes were smashed and wood splintered as the nightmare continued, the hellish weather not seeming to come even remotely close to stopping. If anything, the storm seemed to be picking up in intensity by the moments.

"Sir, boarding the boats now!" shouted back a deck hand as the ship's crew hurried into the frail-looking lifeboats, forced to abandon their valuable cargo of spices, tea, and wood back down in the flooded hold.

"GOOD!" boomed the captain, as he fought against the storm from the helm, "GO AHEAD AND LOWER AWAY!"

"Sir, you're not coming?!"

"A CAPTAIN ALWAYS GOES DOWN WITH HIS SHIP!" declared the old seaman defiantly, standing ramrod straight even while he continued to grapple with the wheel.

"Sir-"

"GO!!!"

The order was never to be carried out, as a large wave struck the ship on the starboard side with such force that the ship began to tilt onto its port side. Screaming a thousand different curses at the gods, the captain frantically spun the wheel in a vain attempt to stabilize his ship. With a final, devastating wave, the sea hit the ship once more on the starboard side, tipping it over until its masts were practically parallel with the ocean's churning surface.

"CUT THE ROPES-"

With a terrible fury, the water surged over the ship, capsizing it and finishing off its passengers for good. After a while, the ship slowly began to sink, its crew struggling to stay afloat in the roiling waves. Those that couldn't swim drowned fast, and those that could were thrown about like rag dolls.

Finally, the storm ceased its violence. The sea's surface became gentler, and the winds stopped their ferocious activities. The surviving crew members were baffled by this puzzling phenomenon, but welcomed it nonetheless. They began clinging to barrels, planks, and anything else that could float, to try and stayed buoyed until they could find a way out of their current predicament.

It was far from over, however. For a brief second, the ocean's surface swirled sinisterly in a manner not unlike that of a whirlpool, before parting like a pair of lips to let a grotesque, seaweed-covered ship to lurch up onto the open air, with a maneuver almost as graceful as a dolphin's leap. The bellicose, sea-ravaged ship landed back on the water's surface with a huge splash, eliciting terrified cries from the shipwrecked seamen. The ship sailed forward with a serene slowness that almost felt deliberate, before coming to a stop right next to the group of men treading water.

A longboat was lowered from the deformed ship, whose bowsprit was decorated with a set of fang-like ornaments that made it resemble the jaws of a crocodile. Even before the longboat reached them, the men started screaming in fear, and tried to swim away.

Their terror was not irrational. Standing upright in the longboat was a tall, broad-shouldered figure wearing a three-cornered captain's hat. His cold blue eyes took in the sight of the struggling men, who seemed to be somehow coming closer to his longboat, as though the little craft was drawing them in on its own gravity. A whole mass of octopus tentacles that made up his beard twitched and writhed as though kneading the air itself in search of the faint scent of Death.

When they were finally within earshot, and facing the longboat, he cleared his throat loudly, and spoke up with great relish.

"Tell me honestly... How many of ye fear... _Death_?" Davy Jones enunciated clearly, to his captive audience of doomed sailors.

xxx

Davy Jones was very happy on the thirty-first of October, whatever year it might have been; he'd lost count after the first three hundred or so. He was now three men richer when it came to his crew, and of course, their fear of Death had been sufficient motivation for them to seal a deal with the Sea Devil himself. As for those that were not afraid of Death...

Well, let it never be said that he didn't take care of the fishes in the sea. Aside from the seaweed that was literally growing all over the Flying Dutchman, he sent down plenty of meat for the little fishes, too. If they weren't afraid of Death, why not introduce them to the Reaper with haste? It was a win-win situation with no catches.

Sighing with a hint of contentment, he stepped into his cabin, and closed the door.

He thought that the cabin was empty, but someone was waiting for him in there already.

"You!" he spat, recognizing the black-robed figure, "Ye were told to never again return to this world, SCUM!"

"On the contrary," the figure replied, with a somewhat amused voice, "You and Captain Sparrow told me to never return if I was trying to conquer this world. I have no intentions of doing so this time, I can assure you."

The Dutchman's captain narrowed his eyes with unmasked suspicion, "Then what business be a foul creature like ye be partaking of on this world?"

"Tsk, tsk," the figure chided, lowering the hood covering its face to reveal a man with short-cropped platinum blond hair, and neatly trimmed facial hair, with several ear piercings, "Such hypocrisy! The Sea Devil himself, calling _me_ a foul creature!"

"I'll be doing the duty entrusted to me, ye dog!" snarled Davy Jones, stepping back and opening his cabin's door, "MACCUS, PALIFICO! THERE BE A PROBLEM FOR YE TO DEAL WITH!"

"Before you let your minions come in with swords drawn, know this," the Organization member said calmly, experimentally playing a few notes on the large pipe organ that took up an entire wall in the Dutchman's captain's cabin, "I have... a deal to make."

Davy Jones' first mate and personal guard appeared at the doorway, the shark-headed first mate wielding a broadsword and the coral-covered guard armed with two rusty hooks. Davy Jones stepped aside to grant them entry into the cabin, before turning to glare at the Nobody in his cabin.

"Deal? Since when do bastards like ye deal in anything other than Death?"

"We usually deal in Death... But this time, I have something that might be of interest to you," the Nobody smirked, as two Gambler minion Nobodies materialized out of thin air, cards and dice already poised for combat, "Just a little something I found on a forgotten little islet..."

A small black chest appeared in the Nobody's gloved hands, causing Davy Jones to let out a gasp of shock and his two crewmen to take a step forward, weapons drawn.

"What... How..." sputtered Davy Jones, struggling to keep a lid on his rage, "IMPOSSIBLE!"

Luxord smiled impishly at Davy Jones, "Oh, you'll be surprised... I know exactly what lies in this chest, and what I can do with it."

"Liar!"

The Gambler of Fate shrugged, "I don't think so."

With a sudden movement of his hands, he slammed the chest on the ground. Davy Jones let out a sharp exhalation, as though he had just been given a solid punch in the ribs. He stepped back unsteadily, and Palifico caught his captain, narrowly avoiding impaling him on the rusty hooks he was holding.

"Ye... Ye will never find the key!" wheezed Davy Jones, clutching at his chest, even as Luxord picked up the little iron chest again, with his right hand, "If it's locked, ye can't kill me!"

"You mean this?" Luxord smirked, holding up a key that had seemingly appeared in his left hand. It was a strange-looking key, with two stems and ornate designs on its bits, "Stopping Time and rooting through someone's beard can have _such _interesting results."

Davy Jones let out a shout of anger, and gestured towards Luxord, "MACCUS, PALIFICO! RUN HIM THROUGH AND GET MY HEART BACK!"

Luxord vanished, and reappeared sitting on a wide wooden beam that ran along the wall above the organ, still holding the chest and key, "You'll be doing exactly as I say now, Davy Jones. Your heart is in my hands, now. As is the key to its destruction."

"The Dutchman must have a captain! Ye can't take my place!"

Luxord shrugged, "I could always get a minion Nobody to do the job for me. It's no problem for me, really."

Davy Jones and his two crewmen stared at Luxord, mouths agape with a mix of disbelief and outrage. Finally, when Luxord made as if to unlock the chest, Davy Jones gave in.

"Ye win," the Sea Devil sighed, his expression one of defeat, "Name ye terms for the chest's SAFE return."

"It is a pleasure to have an understanding with you, Captain Jones," Luxord smirked, as he vanished the chest into thin air, along with its key.

xxx

Cid let out a sigh of relief as the last of the civilians was safely locked aboard the evacuation Gummi ships. The large Space-G Gummi blocks welded to the back of the lumpy-looking ships began to hum softly, as the ships' pilots ran them through a warm up and activation cycle. The hatches of the large ships began to close, and he himself moved towards Sora, Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Merlin, and DiZ, who were standing next to a much smaller - also faster and deadlier - Gummi ship that they themselves would board to try and provide some measure of an armed escort for the huge, ponderous migration Gummi ships.

"We'll be off the ground within the next ten minutes, I wager," he announced, lighting up a cigarette, "And we'd clear the atmosphere in about thirty, at most."

"Shame," Sora shook his head sadly, "I was starting to like this Island."

"Happens all the time, kid," Leon grimaced, "When the Organization moves in, people have to move out. It's either that, or death and experimentation."

The others nodded, while Yuffie turned to stare out at the open ocean that went out as far as the eye could see, maybe even further. The deep blue water seemed to be unusually calm today; possibly unnaturally so given the usual, rather temperamental currents around the Island.

She let out a surprised cry as she saw the ocean's surface beginning to form a swirling concavity, like a small whirlpool. A large, ragged-looking spur rose out of the whirlpool, followed by the broad hull of what was, unmistakeably, a Dutch galleon.

"There's a pirate ship out there!" she cried out, causing the others to turn around and take in the sight of the large, ancient vessel settling down on the waves, which had resumed their usual frenzied activity.

"It's Davy Jones!" Mmerlin gasped, "But why-"

"The captain of the Flying Dutchman has obviously allied himself with the Organization," DiZ said darkly, as he gestured towards their small, lightweight spacecraft, "We'll have to get aboard and try to distract him long enough for the other ships to take off."

"Firin' her up now!" Cid barked from behind the control panel, where he and Leon were bringing the ship's systems online, "At most it'll be two minutes before this puppy's airborne!"

"I don't think we HAVE two minutes!" Aerith said, pointing out at the Dutchman's ghastly form.

Everyone turned to look at the ghost ship once again, and collectively let out sounds of astonishment. It was understandable, since pirate galleons don't often fly, and that was just what the Dutchman was doing; tilting her bow up and slowly ascending into the air, as if she were being hoisted upwards by invisible pulleys and ropes.

"Cid, tell the evacuation craft to hurry their ascent!" DiZ snapped, "All of you, get aboard!"

None of them said anything, instead running into the small Gummi ship and getting belted down for take-off. Their mini craft lifted off the ground, and the huge migration ships strained their engine Gummi blocks to try and rise up faster through the skies despite their hulking sizes. The Flying Dutchman was now sailing steadily through the air, hatches carved into the mouths of old mens' faces opening all over the devil ship's sides.

xxx

"Get this ship up faster!" shouted Captain Wakka, as he manned the helm of MS1, the first of the migration ships, "The Dutchman's on our tail, yo!"

"The engine Gummi blocks can't take much more strain!" shouted back Tidus, his chief engineer, "Any more pushing and they'll melt to slag!"

"Motherchoot!" Wakka spat, cursing the Dutchman in his native Besaid tongue.

"Here they come!" cried out Selphie, from where she sat behind the sensor consoles.

Indeed, the huge, terrifying galleon was now practically moving parallel to their ship's port side. Through the windows of the Gummi ship, civilians shrank back in fear as they saw the mutated, cursed crew of the Dutchman shouting out battle cries and preparing the ghost ship's cannons for firing.

Wakka pulled his ship into a steeper ascent, trying to put more distance between himself and the Devil himself. Just as his ship began to rise higher than the cursed galleon, he heard the loud sounds of cannon shots, which were rapidly followed by loud explosions from somewhere along the middle of the Gummi ship itself.

"Selphie! What those demons doing, ya?!"

"They... fired regular cannonballs at us," she replied, somewhat baffled, "Nothing the Repair Gummi blocks can't-"

"HEARTLESS IN THE SHIP!" cried out one of the passengers through the emergency intercom, "SHADOWS AND SOLDIERS AND MINUTE BOMBS! HEL-"

The man's voice was silenced abruptly, even as Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie saw the darkness oozing in under the bridge's door, like a puddle of spilled ink that was spreading way too fast.

"Weapons!" Wakka barked, as he put the ship on autopilot - not that he believed it could make it off this world intact anymore - before pulling his metal blitzball out from under the helm, "We'll be taking these beasts on, ya!"

The darkness rapidly solidified into several Shadows, Neoshadows, and Soldiers, which practically pounced on the three humans as soon as they had fully formed themselves out of the darkness.

"A beautiful sight, ain't it?"

Davy Jones gave the Nobody standing next to him a begrudging nod, as he surveyed the scene of the huge airship being overwhelmed by the Heartless that had boarded it, "Maybe so. But I'd be preferring my heart back, if ye please!"

"Nuh-uh! No can do," Xigbar replied simply, as he toyed with gravity and sent the Dutchman further forward to catch up with the second Gummi ship, "You're too much of a loose cannon, Captain Jones. We need collateral if we are to use your services."

"The captain of the Flying Dutchman-" began Davy Jones indignantly, only to be cut-off by Xigbar.

"You shall be our underling for as long as we deem it necessary, understand? I wouldn't care much for you and your collection of fish-men here, but unfortunately, you're the only _thing_ we can use to get this gig done well. So you'll do as you're told, got it?"

The tentacle-bearded seaman sputtered in outrage and glared at Xigbar, before turning to speak to his chief gunner, Ogilvey, "Give those escapees a taste of lead!"

"FIRE AT MY COMMAND!" the gruesomely-deformed crewman shouted, his voice like the sound of wind blowing in the dead silence of twilight, "FIRE!"

The cannons spoke once again, and the second Gummi ship of the day received a dozen nasty shots to its colorful hull. Almost immediately, Heartless appeared aboard the ship, rapidly and efficiently disposing of the ship's passengers. The Dutchman's crew cheered at the violent sight, enjoying the thought of the carnage that was unfolding on the large airships.

Their captain might have been held to ransom for this, but that didn't mean that they weren't going to enjoy sending several hundred souls up to meet the Reaper, now, would they?

"Two down, two to go," Xigbar said with a note of happiness, "We'll have to speed up to catch the remaining two, though."

"Greenbeard!" Jones called out to his helmsman, "Do what the Nobody says!"

"Good to see you know who's in charge here," said Xigbar with a wide grin.

"Captain!" this time it was Koleniko, the quill-faced coxswain, "There be a small airship heading for us!"

Jones and Xigbar looked out to where the coxswain was pointing, and saw a smaller Gummi ship flying speedily towards them, Fira Gummi blocks charging for attack.

Jones snorted in disdain upon seeing the small craft, whereas Xigbar smiled sadistically.

"Ogilvey, give them a taste of the Triple Guns!"

Xigbar merely grinned, even as Xaldin stepped out of a portal behind him, "Think you can handle it, Xaldin?"

"Why not?" the Whirlwind Lancer shot back, summoning his six lances out of nothingness.

The small Gummi ship opened fire on the Dutchman, only to be blown severely off-course by a sudden gust of wind that smacked into its hull from below. The fireballs went wide, and the gunners under Ogilvey's command found their mark with the Triple Guns, leaving six large dents in the smaller ship.

"Impressive armor," Jones observed, even whilst signaling for Maccus to bring out the grappling hooks and ropes, "We'll have to board this one to take her down, ayuh!"


	10. Escape

**Escape**

Davy Jones smirked with sadistic pleasure as he watched his crew fling grappling hooks at the small, multicolored airship that was harassing his own pirate ship. As much as he hated being the Nobodies' lapdog, he did enjoy a good fight now and then. Of course, few were willing to oblige him when it came to the matter, so... he figured that he'd be much better off trying to make good out of whatever fate had thrown his way. And what better opponent to fight than the Keyblade master himself? A splendid treat, indeed!

Now, as two of the huge, lumbering ships his crew had disabled earlier began to slowly fall towards the ground, their engines straining to keep their dead weight airborne, he set his sights on the airship which held the Organization's precious target - the boy who held the Key,

"Captain!" rasped Maccus, his shark-like First Mate, "None of the hooks can penetrate their armor! Shall we use the harpoons?"

"Do what ye have to, Maccus," he replied with a smile, "I want them brought on board as fast as possible, heh!"

Maccus nodded, before turning to the chief gunner, one-eyed Ogilvey, "Harpoons on the ready?"

Ogilvey nodded, and gave a loud command to his gunners below deck, "GIVE THEM DOGS THE HARPOONS!"

Beneath the barnacle-encrusted deck,two crewmen, Penrod and Hadras, lit the fuses on the cannons they had been preparing, out of which jutted the wicked looking points of rusted metal harpoons.

BOOM! BOOM! Two harpoons, trailing fine yet durable chains, flew out of the cannons, hitting the Gummi ship on the wing and hull and sticking firm. The small craft's engine blocks flared up in response, pulling the little ship away from the Flying Dutchman, but yet the harpoons still remained jammed in the structural Gummi blocks that made up the hull.

"Haul them in!" snapped Jones, a tad triumphantly, "Prepare for boarding their wretched ship!"

The Dutchman's crew duly responded to their captain's orders, struggling to turn two large wheel-like structures below deck, which had many chains wound around them. As the wheels turned, the chains linking the Gummi ship to the Dutchman started becoming tauter, before the little ship itself was drawn closer to the ghostly ship. Above deck, planks with metal hooks on their ends were brought out and ropes lowered from the masts, as Davy Jone's crewmen scrambled to prepare for the boarding of their diminutive quarry.

Before they could latch their boarding implements onto the Gummi ship, the colorful craft's weaponry glowed with energy, before discharging a series of fireballs towards the Dutchman itself.

xxx

"Mother of fuck!" Cid cursed, as he felt the tremors running through their hull, "Those suckers lanced us!"

"Harpoons?" DiZ asked, anger obvious in his voice.

"No, they shot toothpicks at us. Hell yeah, harpoons! We're being reeled in now."

"Fire at them, at close range the fire spells ought to sever the chains," said Leon brusquely.

"Firing!"

Before their fireballs could hit the spots where the chains met the Dutchman's hull, a sudden gust of wind whipped the spells aside, dissipating them into useless cinders. The Gummi ship drew even closer to the Dutchman, and several more vibrations were felt running through the hull, as was a loud din right outside the ship's hatch.

"The fish men want to board, I think," Merlin suggested, only to be cut-off by Cid.

"Damn right! Now, go and beat them back and cut those motherfuckin' chains!"

With that, he opened the hatch, and almost immediately, several of Davy Jone's ghostly crewmen leaped into their ship, a small group of Heartless right behind them.

Sora and Riku charged forward, weapons drawn. A crewman with a moray eel sticking out of his chest rushed forward, snapping his jaws and swinging a sword, but had his strikes parried by Riku's blade, while Sora exchanged slashes and blocks with a sword-wielding creature whose chest looked like an open oyster, two petrified humanoid beings lying between the spiky shells.

"HYAH!" snarled one of the fiends, as he jumped onto the ship, several Shadows appearing before him, "Get the humans!"

The Heartless melted into the deck, sliding forward until a spell from DiZ banished them into balls of dust. With a bellow of rage, the stingray-headed creature ran forward, only to receive a shot in the chest from Leon's Gunblade. Staggering from the force of the shot, the Man-ray stumbled backwards, before falling out of the Gummi ship's open hatch.

"Cid, close the hatch!" Leon snapped, "We can't let any more of them get in!"

"Cut the chains, FOOL!"

"AHHH!!!" shouted the oyster-like Dutchman in agony, as Sora shattered one of the two pearl-like humanoids in his chest cavity. A tremor ran through his body, and he fell to the floor, twitching. Within a second, another one of his fellow fish-men jumped into the fray, taking Sora on with a weapon resembling a lumberjack's axe.

"GET THEM ABOARD!" came Davy Jone's angry bellow from the Dutchman's deck, "BEFORE I COME IN THERE AND DO IT MYSELF!"

"Leon! Cut the chains!" Merlin yelled, as he electrocuted a Dutchman with a conch shell for a head. The man's head fell onto the floor, and rolled out of the open hatch, the headless body soon falling out to join its detached parts.

With a grunt, Leon shoved a lobster-like Dutchman aside, feeling some satisfaction as he heard the short creature's legs snap against the wall. Now, the Gummi ship was packed with the fish-men, which were rapidly swarming aboard, threatening to overwhelm the people inside. He slashed at a huge mountain of a thing with jellyfish tentacles trailing out of its neck, and received several sharp stings in rapid succession. Falling to the floor with a cry of pain, he brought his weapon up just in time to knock aside the jellyfish creature's downward blow with a sledgehammer. The creature snarled at him, before turning around and lifting its hammer up high again, only to be blown out of the hatch by a fireball shot at it by Riku.

Sora slashed open a coral-encrusted monster's stomach, and almost recoiled in disgust as dozens of undigested fish spilled out of the torn abdomen, some of them still twitching and squirming. The wounded Dutchman stared open-mouthed at the gaping hole in his torso, before collapsing to the floor with a gurgle of pain. Summoning a ring of fireballs to fly around himself, Sora saw that the Gummi ship was now just feet away from the Flying Dutchman itself, and that a crewman was lowering a plank to the ship's open hatch. On the ghost ship's deck, many more of the fish-men were already clamoring towards the plank, weapons drawn and ready.

"GRAVITY!" he shouted, sending six of the creatures flying out of the hatch, their bodies slamming into their own ship with a collective, wet THUD! They fell screaming to the ground far below them, as Sora rushed to the open hatch. The spell also dislodged the plank that had been lowered towards the hatch, sending the plank flying into the Dutchman's algae-coated hull.

"That's him!" a new voice distracted him for a second, as he was about to sever the chains linking their ship to the Dutchman, "Jones, get him and your heart is yours again!"

"Agreed!" boomed a tentacle-faced Dutchman, wearing a captain's hat. Behind it, Sora saw two cloaked figures that were unmistakably members of Organization XIII.

"You'll never take us alive!" he yelled back defiantly, only to receive a glancing blow to his back. He fell to the floor, and kicked out blindly at the feet of what he supposed was his assailant. His instincts were proven correct, as the oyster-like creature he had wounded earlier was tripped over and fell out of the Gummi ship.

Lying dangerously close to the edge of the hatch, he swung out towards the harpoon chains, and felt a rush of satisfaction as one of the two chains snapped. The tentacle-faced captain of the Flying Dutchman, the one apparently named Jones, shouted in outrage and screamed at his crewmen, "HARPOONS!"

Before Jones' men could fire another harpoon at the Gummi ship, Sora severed the second chain, and the tiny craft flew away from the pirate galleon with surprising speed. Angry bellows could be heard from the deck of the ghost ship, and the sound of cannons being brought to bear was heard clearly.

"CID!" Sora cried, even as he was forced to block a strike from the lobster-like Dutchman, who was rushing to jump out of the hatch, as were his fellow creatures, "Take us out of here!"

"SHUT UP, KIDDO! FUCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!"

The Dutchmen all ran and jumped out of the closing hatch, including the one whose stomach Sora had hacked open. They all free-fell towards the ground, before stopping in mid-air as though an invisible safety net had caught them. Cid closed the hatch, and they flew skywards, leaving the Dutchman far below them. Above them, the two surviving migration ships had breached the atmosphere, and were already little more than specks in the far distance. Designed to be more comfortable and maneuverable in the ethereal realm of Gummi space rather than in the significantly denser air of a world's atmosphere, the two ships were already picking up speed, and would soon be too far from the Destiny Islands' atmosphere such that the Dutchman couldn't possibly fly and catch up with them since the cursed vessel itself wasn't designed for space travel.

xxx

Davy Jones glowered in displeasure as his crewmen were levitated back on deck by the joint efforts of Xaldin and Xigbar. Most of the seamen were wounded, and he didn't like the way Ogilvey's stomach hung open like a woman's girdle. Half of Penrod's legs were snapped, and Manray's arm was broken. Broondjongen's pearl-like innards had been severely damaged, and morey's eel head had been slashed at several times, by the looks of it.

His glower only intensified as he whipped about and turned to face the two Nobodies, who had just finished bringing all his crew and equipment back on board, "Ye two ought to be happy. My men are wounded, BADLY. And ye quarry escaped. Those Heartless ye summoned were of no help, hmph!"

"Patience, Jones," Xigbar said, yawning as if he were bored with the whole proceedings, "Your incompetence was also a factor in their escape."

"HOW DARE-"

"Shut it, squid head!" Xaldin snapped, a lance appearing in his hands, "We expected them to escape, and if we got them... That would have been a bonus. But they got away, so we shall be needing your... _services_ for a while more."

Davy Jones made an infuriated sound deep in his throat, but didn't get to say anything more before Xigbar interrupted him.

"Now, now, Jones... It wouldn't do to get upset at us... After all, I do have _this_..." the Sharpshooter grinned sadistically, thrusting a hand into one of his cloak's concealed pockets and withdrawing a shiny, silvery object that glinted harshly in the morning sun, "We had this made specially for _you,_ my dear captain!"

The Dutchman's captain leaned forward slowly, careful not to overbalance on his crab-like peg leg. Squinting his ocean-blue eyes, he took a good look at the shiny thing, only to step back with a gasp of horror as he realized what it was. His men stood stock still on the deck, wondering what new cruelty it was that the Nobodies had managed to inflict on their captain this time round.

"It... It can't... Ye couldn't have!" Davy Jones babbled, his eyes wide with a mixture of desperation and outrage.

"Oh, but we HAVE!" snarled Xigbar with great relish, as he stowed the offending object away deep in his pocket, "And you'll do well to remember that!"

"Each of us now holds one copy of the key to your precious chest," Xaldin declared triumphantly, "And even once we have released our hold on you... We'll be keeping at least one copy of your special key on us, HAH!"

"Ye... BASTARDS!!!"

"Brace yourself, fish-face. I'm sending you under now, heh. We've got another world to be at, and the faster we get there, the better."

Davy Jones continued to alternate between glowering and sputtering at the Nobodies even as his ship slowly angled downwards and flew towards the ocean, the two Nobodies leaving via portals of darkness mere seconds before the ship's bow breached the water's surface. Eventually, the ghost galleon was entirely submerged and soon enough vanished into an underwater portal of swirling dark energy that closed with a burst of bubbles as soon as the Dutchman cleared its threshold.

xxx

"We made it, people!" Cid announced, as they cleared the atmosphere, finally entering the vacuum of space, the two larger Gummi ships visible in the far horizon, "At last, those fish-men can't bother us anymore!"

"Maybe not..." Aerith mumbled, "How did they get here in the first place? Port Royal's a whole other world, and you can't exactly open portals to other worlds that easily, especially for large objects like the Dutchman to pass through."

"The Nobodies do have some of the most proficient mages of the age amongst their number," Merlin reminded her casually, "Just three or four of them working together would be enough to open such a portal, and Jones himself probably had no choice but to cooperate."

"Why would he work with them, anyways?" Sora asked, from where he stood next to Riku, leaning against the hatch of the Gummi ship, "I thought Port Royal was neutral in this war?"

"The world is, but Jones' hands are probably tied behind his back," DiZ replied simply, staring out into the swirling colors of Gummi space, as the ship moved rapidly to Narnia, "Organization XIII probably had his heart all this while, but only now have they decided to use it to make him obey their orders."

"His _heart_?" Riku echoed softly, "You never mentioned this before, DiZ."

"This was roughly about the time you were... detained... by the Organization, Riku," Aerith explained gently, "When we did rescue you, there were more pressing matters on hand."

"But what's the deal with his heart?" Sora asked, puzzled, "Isn't it in his body?"

"He _carved_ his heart out and locked it in a chest, Sora," Leon answered quietly, "They don't call him the Sea Demon for nothing, you know."

"He did _what_?"

"Took a knife, cut it out, and stuffed in a little iron box, locked it, and tucked the key away safely," Yuffie said chirpily, tossing a glowing yellow Materia sphere from hand to hand, "Probably hides the key behind that wriggling beard of his, though. It's sooo yucky, I bet no one ever thought of looking there!"

After she had spoken up, the ship's occupants were all silent, staring at her. She only realized this after several minutes, when she looked up from trying to squint into the Materia's core. Jumping to her feet and stashing the Materia away in a pocket, she put her hands on her hips and pouted at them.

"What???"

"Never mind, Yuffie," Leon muttered, "Sit down, shut up, and chill."

"Leon is right... Relax now, before we arrive on Narnia and have a whole lot more work to deal with," DiZ said slowly, "Even if Aslan himself has granted us shelter, there is no guarantee that Empress Jadis will not try to harm us before the Nobodies arrive."

"But he kicked them off his world the last time!"

"They have Jones on their side this time, and he is a formidable force to be reckoned with. If they can control Narnia's oceans, things might be significantly more difficult to handle..."

"And that ship can fly, too!" Sora added.

"Probably some mischief by Xigbar with his gravity-manipulating powers," Merlin commented, cleaning the thick lenses of his spectacles using parts of his billowing sleeves, "He didn't get to be the Organization's Number II by just playing with gravity and making pebbles fly, I think. A ship wouldn't have been that hard for him to levitate, most likely."

"Who is this Jadis woman, anyway?" spoke Riku, brushing a lock of silver hair out of his eyes "She that witch you mentioned earlier?"

"Yes," DiZ nodded, turning to face the others around him, "She is a powerful sorceress indeed, and has kept Narnia trapped in a never-ending winter for the last century or so. And if the period of the spell is any indication, in addition with what I've been told, she is also immortal to a certain extent."

"Immortal?" Leon asked politely, his disbelief evident by the way his left eyebrow vanished beneath his fringe of brown hair, "Unless I missed some lessons, I thought it was a generally accepted fact that immortality was impossible to be attained, by all means be they magical or physical?"

"I said 'immortal to a certain extent', Leon. She has lived for much longer than a mere century, if the Narnian's are reporting their facts to me correctly. And she was apparently preserved in some form of stasis also, on _her_ former world before she came over to Narnia and started her shenanigans there."

"How did she get free of the stasis?" Yuffie asked, before anyone else could get the question in, "And why aren't there others like her?"

"It seems a human boy and girl somehow made a trip to her world through several accidentally-formed wormholes, and the boy awoke her with his curiosity, by ringing a bell that ended her stasis. Then, they escaped and the world ended, so she made her way to Narnia, and settled there."

"And the other of her kind? Surely they were in stasis too?" Merlin quipped.

"All dead. She used a rare spell, one that I have only heard the slightest rumors about. It was a terribly Dark spell, one that would kill all life on a world save for the person who spoke those words."

"Impossible!" Cid snorted from the bridge controls, "No spell could be THAT powerful!"

"I assure you, it was," DiZ said grimly, "But fortunately, the words are so complex and arcane, and her memory so addled after her millenia-long stasis. Now, she can no longer recall the exact wordings of the spell, and hence can't end the lives of those who dare oppose her just like that."

"How would YOU know, then, you ol' douche?"

"I read a transcript of parts of the spell that she has tried to use on the Narnians; she might have forgotten bits of it, but she hasn't stopped experimenting and trying to recall the spell's precise incantations. It is in a language older than Time itself, a language of magic. But the gaps were rather obvious, and given that the language of the spell is long dead and buried, her success in the matter is non-existent."

"Ah, gotcha."

"Look, there's a world out ahead!" Yuffie, of course. The short ninja was jumping excitedly around the bridge now, even as the world she had spoken about came into sight on their cockpit windscreen. It was a world covered in white, with dark patches of black and blue appearing here and there, with the faint wisps of clouds being visible over the colored patches, the clouds becoming effectively invisible after they moved over a large expanse of white; which was practically the entire world, loosely speaking.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Narnia," DiZ announced soberly, even as their ship and the two huge migration ships started descending through the thin veil of the ivy world's atmosphere, above which they had been hovering, waiting for their defenders to catch up with them.

xxx

The sun that shone over Narnia was bright and hot, a sign of its relative youth as a star. However, despite the sun shining as powerfully as was permissible by the laws of physics and the need to sustain life on the world of Narnia, the land beneath its glowing care remained covered in ice, snow, and sleet. This might have been partially-caused by the thick layer of clouds that formed over the chilly earth, which blocked the sun's rays from warming the desolate landscapes below. Trees stood barren, stripped of their foliage and blooms by the unending cold of Jadis' magical winter, standing out all over the white plains like ghastly hands stretching their fingers towards the cloud-covered sky. Rivers and bodies of water stood stock-still, their surfaces frozen over into thick sheets of ice, the water moving beneath the solid layers being like a trapped animal; furious and restrained.

Yet over the frozen wastelands, in an area situated amidst the coldest winds, the most vicious of gales, and the heaviest of snowfalls, stood a castle rendered entirely out of ice. The walls of the castle itself were made of solid granite boulders, cemented together by unnaturally thick bands of ice and snow. All over the spacious courtyards were innumerable statues of stone, their expressions of alarm, fear, and rage being almost grotesque due to the poor workmanship of the statues. In fact, the statues weren't only located in the courtyards, but also in the grand foyer, audience chamber, and even dining room of the majestic ice palace. Generally, they made for quite a sickening sight; that of a hundred shocked, angry, or terrified beings frozen in time, their bodies turned to stone. Here and there, stone fragments of all sizes lay on the floor, marking the approximate location where an unfortunate statue or several had been shattered to smithereens.

It was also noteworthy that in the palace's winding corridors, sweeping stairways, and spacious chambers, numerous icicles hung down from the ceiling, and jutted out from the floor, quite a number of them joining to form pillars and columns that held up the ceiling all over the castle. The sun's feeble rays couldn't penetrate the thick ice that was the castle's roof, and so the rooms within the icy edifice were often dark and cold, only very few of them illuminated by candles that surprisingly had no effect on the ice that surrounded them.

And in the largest of the castle's chambers, a splendid throne made entirely out of the clearest, most transparent of ice stood imposingly atop a high-raised dais that boasted countless ornately-carved runes all over its four sides.

The chamber was empty, as it had been for the last five hours or so since the palace's builder, owner, and inhabitant had left for a breath of fresh, wintry air. But the silence in the chamber was suddenly disrupted by the sound of two darkness portals opening in the middle of the room, which were soon revealed to be the entryways for two Organization members to step into the large room.

"Nice structure," marveled one of the two, "I approve wholeheartedly of this architectural concept!"

"Now, now, Vexen," chided the other, taller Nobody, "We are here for two reasons only, and complimenting Empress Jadis on her choice of interior design and building materials isn't one of the two."

"Still, the place is nice, you have to admit that, Luxord."

"Thank you for the kind words, gentlemen," came a voice from the frozen throne, "Though I would like you to make your business here clear before I turn you into stone, as I have done with countless others."

Vexen and Luxord turned to look at the woman who had mysteriously appeared on the throne, and who was idly twirling a long, slender scepter in her delicate-looking hands. Of course, delicate here means 'dainty when compared to her seven-foot height and cruel facial expression'.

"Empress Jadis," Luxord practically purred, as he lowered his hood and bowed deeply before the ice queen, "It is an honor to meet you once again. And I do believe you've never met my colleague, Vexen? He is an ice-elemental, much like yourself, and I'm sure he is equally as honored to cast his gaze upon you."

"No honor comes from meeting heartless beings like you Nobodies," she answered snappishly, her eyes conveying an aura of frozen anger, "Speak of the matter what brings you to seek my aid, and then leave. Whatever the offer may be, I refuse to work with toerags like your lot."

The bearded Nobody smiled slowly as he considered her words, "Ah, Your Majesty... But what if I told you that our proposition was to effectively hand you Narnia on a silver platter?"

"Narnia is _mine_ already, foolish being," Jadis replied icily, her scepter beginning to glow with energy, "Now... LEAVE."

"Aslan is still quite the thorn in your side, isn't he?" Vexen smirked, "We could remove that particular thorn for you, hm!"

The Ice Empress cocked her head ever so slightly to one side, staring at the Chilly Academic with a look that betrayed only a minute bit of curiosity, "Oh? Pray tell, how do you plan to achieve that, which I myself have failed to do since my arrival here more than a hundred years ago?"

"We have... plans... And a powerful ally on our side."

"As I recall, Aslan himself drove you from my kingdom just a few years ago. He somehow went back into hiding, but that is not the issue here," she leaned forward and smiled ever-so-slightly at her two visitors, "If you couldn't stop him _then_, what makes this time so different?"

Luxord smiled at her charmingly, "Ah, your Majesty... This time, things are different indeed."

"I am beginning to lose my patience in dealing with you two. Maugrim!"

A snarling wolf materialized out of the darkness behind her throne, slinking out of the shadows so silently that its appearance was almost as though it had been conjured by the Empress. Stepping around the throne, it faced the two Nobodies, fixing its yellow eyes on them. Several more wolves stepped out of the darkness, and soon, the two members of Organization XIII were surrounded by six of the snarling beasts.

"Your Majesty," Vexen said, not sounding ruffled at all despite the six fierce creatures staring him and Luxord, "We have brought a demon named Davy Jones to this world to help us with this task. Success is absolutely probable."

"What does this... demon... do?"

"He is, simply put, a harvester of souls," Luxord answered, his deck of cards sliding out of his sleeve, "And this time... He shall be the trick up our sleeve to finish Aslan off once and for all."

With a deft flick of his wrist, he sent a single card flying towards Jadis. It landed face-up in her lap, and she studied it with a curious eye. She knew from prior experience that Luxord's deck was printed with images of the Organization's members, with Xemnas being the Ace's face, and Roxas being emblazoned on the King cards, with the members in-between making up the rest of the images on the cards from two to the Queen.

The image of Xemnas that was printed on the Ace of Hearts stared back at her, his smirk almost seeming carnivorous.

"I believe, gentlemen, that you two have piqued my interest enough to stay my hand from killing you... For now."

"And we are undeserving of your graciousness," replied Luxord, summoning the card back into his deck, where it was shuffled up with the rest, "Jones shall be arriving by dusk today, and we welcome you to make his acquaintance."

"And I expect no less."


	11. Preparations

**Preparations**

The small, colorful Gummi ship descended through the layers of Narnia's atmosphere, followed by its two larger companions. As they gradually moved closer to the frozen surface of the cursed land, terrific gales started to lash out at the three ships, as though the very winds themselves had struck up a dislike for the three alien craft. Some of the refugees from Destiny Islands cowered and huddled together in fear, even as the huge migration ships they were sequestered within shook under the powerful onslaught of the Narnian winds.

"Strong atmospheric conditions we have here," Cid commented, as he piloted the tiny Gummi ship skilfully through the scissoring gusts, "Those Narnians must be pretty tough to survive on a world like this."

"I really don't think these winds are natural," Merlin said, as he stared out of the cockpit thoughtfully, "There is a distinct magical aura radiating from the winds..."

Through the thick glass of the cockpit's windscreen, the winds' howling could be heard. Soon enough, their descent was slowed, as though a gigantic, invisible hand had propped itself up against their ventral hull and was pushing against gravity's pull.

Yuffie let out a panicked chirp as she saw, for the briefest of moments, the faint hints of a face staring in at them through a corner of the windscreen, "_Something's_ in the wind, guys!"

As one, all of them - except for Cid, of course - looked out of the windscreen, and saw that she was right. Pressed against the glass was the blurry likeness of a man's face, looking like it had been drawn with smoke. Wisps of trailing mist formed passable impressions of a trailing beard and long whiskers, and swirling masses of atmospheric dust concentrated above the image's 'mouth' to give the 'face' two pupil-less eyes.

"A wind god, Merlin?" DiZ asked, sounding mildly interested.

"Probably... One of the older ones, I'd say," the elderly mage replied, stroking his beard thoughtfully, "But wouldn't he be under Aslan's rule?"

"Impossible to say for sure."

The face slowly began to fade away, and the winds let up momentarily. As they accelerated their descent and came within several hundred feet of the world's icy surface, some gentle gusts began blowing, as though to cushion their drop onto Narnian soil. Several of the sparse, stunted trees that had managed to eke out a pained existence on the frozen tundra had what was left of their foliage blown out into the white wilderness, as the three interstellar ships finally landed on the cold terrain. Abruptly, the winds stopped blowing, leaving the Gummi ships sitting in a veritable space of dead air.

Cid flipped his microphone on and addressed the occupants of the other two Gummi ships, "Attention, people! We've landed on Narnia, and would you kindly NOT leave your present ships until I say so. Glad that we have an understanding. Over!"

Spinning around in his pilot's chair, he turned to face DiZ and Merlin, "So, now what?"

"We wait for Aslan," answered DiZ calmly.

"How does he look like, anyways?" asked Sora, scratching the back of his head absently, "Wasn't he a lion or something like that?"

"Correct, Sora," Merlin nodded, "And I do believe he is approaching our current position."

"How sure are you?" this came from Leon.

"Look out of the cockpit."

Outside the ship, the snow and sleet were melting away and rapidly flowing down the smooth contours of the gently sloping ground. Faint, wispy patches of green appeared, and soon grew into large thickets of grass. Little shrubs began to grow, and flowers bloomed. The temperature within the Gummi ship, which had been noticeably dropping previously, now felt as warm as any one of the afternoons one could have spent on the beaches of Destiny Islands.

Of its own accord, the Gummi ship's door slid open, and the eight of them received a blast of warm Narnian air, scented like prairie wildflowers and carrying with it an unmistakably powerful feeling.

"What the-" Cid began, even as a large shadow was cast into the ship through the open hatch.

"People of the Destiny Islands," enunciated a warm, fatherly voice, "I bid you welcome to Narnia."

"Aslan," DiZ called out in reply, "We owe you much for granting us shelter here on your world."

"I granted you a world to stay on, but as for shelter..." Aslan said, even as his shadow became larger on the ship's floor, "You shall have to form your own defenses against Jadis."

"What if we join your side?" asked Riku, "We could..."

His voice trailed off into silence as the great Lion himself stepped into the ship, nearly standing as tall as the ceiling. Behind him were demi-humans, satyrs, centaurs, and nymphs.

"I would be honored if you chose to aid my cause," Aslan nodded his massive head, "But it must be of your own accord, and not or coercion."

"The honor is ours, Aslan," Leon said quietly, "It is all we can do for your world."

"Very well, then. Come with me, and you shall learn of what needs to be done."

xxx

Empress Jadis stepped out of her frozen palace and walked out towards the large sled that awaited her at the castle's courtyard. The two Nobodies had told her that they would be bringing this Jones character to meet her at the beach near the Stone Table, and she was honestly rather taken by the idea of a demon which could bind Aslan's soul down for good. Gracefully sliding into the sled's cushioned seat, Jadis nodded to the dwarf that sat behind the sled's reins. With a curt grunt, the diminutive Narnian got the sled moving, propelling its significant mass over the sleet-covered, slippery landscape.

They moved rapidly past the dark and foreboding woods, at such speeds that the trees all blended together into one continuous bands of blackness on both sides of the icy path that they traversed. Occasionally, minor gusts of wind would blow against their direction of motion, often slowing them down by the smallest of margins.

"Pathetic wind gods," Jadis murmured with satisfaction, as yet another headwind was thrown at her sled. Since she had first cast Narnia into a spellbound winter, the wind gods that inhabited the wilderness had tried furiously to make her life as difficult as they could possibly make it. But she had cast some potent enchantments on the massive echoing valleys where their seats of power rested, and as such, the beleaguered spirits were now capable of little more than sending tiny, insignificant winds blowing her way.

"Your Majesty," spoke up the dwarf driver in his husky voice, "We are but the shortest distance away from the beach now."

"Well then, I'd best prepare to meet this harvester of souls," the ice queen replied coolly, "Keep your eyes fixed on the path, lest those Narnians try to hold us up again."

The sled moved out of the dark woods and sped onto a dark, pebble-strewn beach where the waves seemed to be lapping rather feebly against the shoreline. Three figures stood at the water's edge, one of them standing directly in the water itself. Of the three, the two which were located on dry land were garbed in the billowing black robes that marked them as members of Organization XIII, and the being who had his feet planted in the waves was dressed in a bulkier outfit, with a large sword strapped to its waist in an elaborate scabbard.

"Stop here."

"As you wish, Your Majesty."

With a soft grunt, the dwarf pulled on the reins and halted the sled in its tracks. The large contraption came to a dead stop not thirty feet away from the three figures, sand and pebbles grinding against its base as it strayed slightly off the icy path on which it was meant to travel.

And then, there was silence.

Save for the sound of the waves breaking against the shore, not a sound was heard from any of the five beings present at the beach that evening. In the semi-darkness of Jadis' winter twilight, the five of them remained in their places, staring down each other in a silent battle of wills.

"And a good evening to you, milady," greeted one of the two Organization Members, as he lowered his hood, "Your timing is impeccable."

"As it has been and always will be, Luxord," Jadis responded icily, "We had a deal to discuss, I believe?"

"Indeed we do," the blond Nobody agreed, "Vexen, would you mind doing to honors?"

The other Nobody lowered his hood, revealing himself to be the lank-haired being that had accompanied Luxord on his previous trip to Jadis' palace, "Your Majesty, we promised that we'd bring you Davy Jones, and here he is!"

With a flamboyant sweep of his gloved hand, Vexen bowed and gestured towards the figure who stood silently in the shallow surf behind him, "Jones, meet Empress Jadis. She shall be working with us to deal with those dratted Narnians, and of course, you'll be answering to her as well as us."

"Why, I never-" started the bulky figure in a thickly-accented voice, only to be interrupted by Jadis' chilling voice.

"Let me get one thing clear here, you heartless pigs! You and your sorry lot will be working UNDER my command, and not standing as my equals. _Is that understood_?"

After a brief pause, Luxord gave her one of his gambler's smiles, and spoke up in a voice so smooth it could have put the finest of silks to shame.

"Why of course, Your Majesty. There never was any doubt on the matter, really. Of that, I can assure you."

"Shall we parley now?" she questioned the three heartless beings, even as she waved a hand and summoned a table and four seats out of thin air, "My patience is wearing thin as it stands."

"Parley," rumbled Davy Jones, as he slid into one of the four seats, which Jadis had moved into the shallow waves, "Now THAT be a term which I can understand, ayuh!"

xxx

Aslan led the way to the green valley where his forces had set up their camp, and the Destiny Islanders all went clack-jawed as soon as they got their eyes on all that was within the valley's fertile confines. Not a single snowflake was in sight, and the land was carpeted by some beautiful greenery that no other bit of Narnian soil had seen in more than a century. Tents had been raised all over the place, and numerous Narnian folk could be seen going about their business.

Though of course, their business was preparing for a war that might soon erupt on their peaceful little world.

Nymphs were daintily dancing around small fires where food was being prepared for the many beings that currently were occupants of the valley, and fauns were diligently carrying large piles of arrows to a group centaurs standing by a veritable mountain of bows, which they were checking for defects. Several gryphons were in sight, flapping their massive wings as they patrolled the skies above their allies' heads. And most surprising of all was the sight of four humans standing around a large, round table that had been placed right in the middle of the valley, at an open space around which all the tents had been erected.

Aslan stopped the entire procession right on a precipice that overlooked the large valley, and turned to face them.

"This is Narnia's true self. And I bid you welcome, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve."

"It's beautiful..." Aerith whispered, even as excited murmurs broke out amongst the refugees from the Destiny Islands, "It's all so... alive!"

"Indeed it is, Aerith Gainsborough," Aslan nodded his massive head, "And though I once told myself to never take sides in any conflict... I find myself breaking my own words to protect the world which I created."

"Aslan!!!" came the cheerful shriek of a human child, from somewhere close by, "You came back!"

"Lucy," the shaggy lion said warmly to the little human girl that had tackled him from the side, "Would you kindly summon Peter, Susan, and Edmund here? We have serious matters to discuss with them."

"Sure!" Lucy chirped happily, before turning to cast a critical look at the Island folk, "Are these the people from that lost world?"

"Yes. But that is a topic for another time, and for now, there are preparations we must make for our stand against Jadis and the Nobodies."

Lucy nodded and ran back towards the narrow path that led down from the precipice, and for a moment, no one said a word.

"Nobodies?" Sora asked wearily, breaking the silence, "They're here already?"

"The spirits in the trees have spread word of mysterious robed figures moving through the woods, and of dark creatures appearing where the mist clings to the ground. Hence, I fear that Jadis has made an alliance with the Organization."

Footsteps sounded as Lucy returned with the three other humans, and soon enough, introductions were made to the Pevensies; Peter, Susan, and Edmund.

"So your world was destroyed?" Susan asked, looking somewhat uneasy.

"It was," confirmed Merlin, "And Aslan gave us shelter here."

"Will you help us fight to save our world from falling, then?" Peter asked, even as he unrolled a map that he had brought to the precipice with him.

"Of course," DiZ murmured slowly, "It is the least we can do to repay Aslan's kindness, after all."

"Very well then."

So the map was spread out across the rocky ground of the precipice, and plans for the battle that was soon to come were discussed. Words that had been inked on the parchment a long time ago and which had not been spoken for decades soon were brought up again, and old, forgotten pathways were discovered. Before any of them realized it, several hours had passed, and the valley was thrown into the shadows of twilight's approach.

Even as the sun set, the Narnian people began to set their plans in motion.

xxx

Luxord walked coolly into Jadis' inner sanctum, and bowed before the ice queen on her frozen throne. Two of her wolf underlings flanked the throne, their yellow eyes fixed on the Nobody that had entered their mistress' castle so rudely not too long ago. Vexen was nowhere in sight; he was somewhere else within the castle's compound, studying the local terrain from whatever decent vantage points he could find.

"Your Majesty," the Gambler of Fate said suavely, "It has come to my attention that you are in the possession of a valuable resource of intelligence."

"And what may that be, Nobody?" asked Jadis slowly, "I do not carelessly give out my secrets to anyone that labors under me."

"My sources tell me that your... _lieutenant_... Maugrim, was it? He should be able to give me all the information that I need to work with."

"Yes, I am Maugrim," growled one of the two wolves present in the chamber, "Be quick with it, Nobody."

"I heard that you detained a faun," Luxord said calmly, even as he made his deck of cards materialize in the palm of his gloved right hand, "And that Empress Jadis had him turned into a statue."

"We've dealt with many fauns, Nobody," the wolf retorted, "They tend to be troublesome, usually. So we bring them here, and they are... dealt with."

"I'd agree, given how they fought back the last time I was here," the Nobody smirked, "But this one was detained for a very unusual reason. Think, Maugrim. Think."

The captain of Jadis' wolf police agents eyed Luxord coldly, his muzzle fixed in an expression that wasn't quite a snarl. He thought for a moment, and then nodded slowly as his memory supplied him with the possible suspects that Luxord had mentioned.

"You might be correct. Be specific, Nobody."

"This particular faun," Luxord enunciated slowly, as his cards fanned out in mid air, laying themselves down by suit and number, "Was detained for leading a... daughter of Eve into this world. Or, more accurately, he led her around the forests surrounding Lantern Waste when she first stepped into this world."

Maugrim's eyes narrowed, "_That_ faun. Yes, I remember him... What do you want to do with him? Can't do much with a rock now, can you?"

"On the contrary, Maugrim," Luxord snapped his fingers smartly, causing a portal of darkness to open right next to him, "I _can_ do quite a bit with that... piece of rock, as you have so aptly called him."

Out of the portal floated two Gambler Nobodies, carrying between them a stone statue of a faun. They deposited it on the floor, and vanished into nothingness, even as the portal closed in on itself. Luxord stepped up to the prone statue, and turned to face Jadis directly.

"Time is all that separates this rock from what it used to be," a soft cry of terror was heard in the throne room, "And so, I need not necessarily be working with a rock."

The faun, restored to his former state, trembled on the icy floor, even as Maugrim and the second wolf advanced towards him. Before either one of the canine beasts could pounce on him, he disappeared in a mass of swirling black energy, leaving Luxord standing before the three Narnians in the chamber.

"Jones has a crewman who is VERY good at getting information out of unwilling suspects," the Nobody said simply, as he summoned up a portal for himself, "And I think your dogs here might have forgotten to do that before they handed him to you, Your Majesty."

Jadis nodded with a cold smile as she digested his words, "I see your intentions, Nobody. Very well then. Nearer to us tomorrow is coming, and we have much to do."

"Indeed, Your Majesty," nodded Luxord, as he stepped through the portal, "That is the truth."

xxx

Clouds rolled lazily across the sky, hours after the sun had set. For once, the moon was not obscured by the heavy winter fog that usually shrouded Narnia's skies like a wet, sticky blanket. Even as the stars winked faintly amidst the cloudy, obsidian background, a distinct reddish tone was visible in the sky's coloration that night. As far as the eye could see, the usually black night-time sky was tinted with a deep shade of red, like a sheet of cloth that had been used to bandage a particularly vicious wound. Davy Jones observed the considerably rare phenomenon with a sailor's critical eye, as his ship maintained its position just fifty yards offshore from the beach where he had been introduced to Empress Jadis.

"Red sky at morning, sailors take warning," he mused aloud, drawing the attention of his helmsman, the seaweed-covered Greenbeard.

"Red sky at night, sailors delight," finished the Dutchman's experienced crewman, "So we'd be expecting a clear sky tomorrow, wouldn't we?"

"That we would, ayuh! And from what those good for nothing Nobody scum have told us, the Narnian folk will be attacking Jadis' forces tomorrow."

"Where be they musterin'?" growled Maccus, flashing his shark's teeth in a bloodthirsty smile.

"Luxord says somewhere beyond those cliffs there," Ogilvey answered, his voice barely more than a ghostly whisper, "There be a narrow mountain path they'd be using."

"Make the cannons ready," Jones said shortly, as he turned to give the cliffs in question, "Especially the triple guns."

"Aye, sir. All armaments have been primed and loaded. All you need to do is say the word."

"That be good, Ogilvey."

Jimmylegs the bosun stepped out onto the deck, calling out to Jones, "Captain!"

"What be ye doing here, Jimmylegs? Ye are supposed to be getting information out of our prisoner, huh!"

"I've gotten what I can from him," the stonefish-headed bosun replied, "And it seems that the Narnians have an extra card up their sleeves that we weren't supposed to know about."

"And what may that be?"

"He said," Jimmylegs paused, "That this _Aslan_ creature will be joining the Narnian forces in battle."

"How sure can ye be of that? That wretched witch told me that Aslan isn't to be trifled with!" Davy Jones asked somewhat snappishly.

"The cat kissed his arse nicely before he confessed to that, Captain sir. And later tonight, methinks that a tooth or two might be good for checking how truthful he has been with me," replied the bosun, even as a sadistic smile lit up his ruined face.

"What ever the case may be, I want the truth out of him by the third watch."

"Aye, sir. With _pleasure_."

Several decks below their feet, a small, frail-looking faun lay shivering in a barred cell. The shaggy fur on his legs and hindquarters was matted with dried blood - which was also splattered liberally all over the worn wooden floor - and the many wounds that marked his body smarted from the seawater that had been thrown on him by the twisted bosun. He was barely conscious, and it was only through the continuous efforts of the Dutchman watching over him that he remained alive.

Hadras grimaced as he stuck a sea urchin's spike into the faun's back, adding to the innumerable spikes that already protruded out of the battered Narnian's body.

"Aiya, you are one painful thing!" muttered the conch-headed crewman, even as he tried to slow down the creature's physical deterioration using what he remembered of his former acupuncture skills, "Very hard to keep you alive!"

"Hadras, Hadras," came a mocking voice from behind him, followed shortly by the sound of footsteps on the barnacle-encrusted stairs leading down to the Flying Dutchman's brig, "No need to worry about keeping that rat alive for much longer."

"Jimmylegs!" hissed the Oriental Dutchman, "This is beyond your normal brutality, ah!"

"My job," snapped the bosun, as he waved a rusted pair of tongs in the air between them, "Is to get the information from this Narnian filth."

"What-"

Jimmylegs cut Hadras off before he could say anything further, "AND, my dear Hadras... I _intend_ to get every bit of knowledge out of this miserable wretch's mind... Even if I have to wring his soul from his body to do it."

As he finished his sentence, Jimmylegs raised the tongs he was holding to his fellow crewman's neck, and dragged the sharp edge of the tool slowly along the edge of his conch-like head. Hadras' eyes widened in a combination of shock and fear as he took in the bosun's words. With a squeak of fear, he pushed past the demented Dutchman, and fled out of the brig, dropping several urchin's spikes on the floor in his haste to leave the detention area.

Turning to the semi-conscious faun, Jimmylegs cleared his throat and spoke up in a voice that was eerily chirpy.

"Now, you Narnian scum... Captain's orders are to check the truth in your leaks," cackled the Dutchman's bosun as he lifted up the faun's head by one of his horns, "So I'll just be playing with some tools, now."

He thrust the pair of tongs into the faun's mouth, and twisted the tool viciously. Despite its vastly weakened state, the little Narnian creature screamed as several of its teeth were forcefully wrenched out of its mouth. Blood ran down its chin, and the extracted teeth fell to the floor with a delicate pitter-patter sound not unlike that of a gentle drizzle.

"What was your name again? Memory isn't what it used to be."

With sob, the abused faun managed to utter his name for Jimmylegs to hear.

"Tumnus."


End file.
